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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 


SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

ECHOES  OF  A  THOUSAND 
AND  ONE   FIRST  NIGHTS 


BY 

ALEXANDER  WOOLLCOTT 

AUTHOR    OF    "MRS.    FISKE,"    "THE    COMMAND 
IS  FORWARD,"  ETC. 


NEW  YORK 

THE  CENTURY  CO. 

1922 


t 


n  ^^Ui^ 


W' 


Copyright,  1922,  by 

Tee  Century  Co. 

Copyright,  191 7-1922,  by 

The  New  York  Times  Company 

Copyright,   1921,  by 

The  Ridgeway  Company 

Copyright,   1922,  by 

George  H.  Doran  Company 

Copyright,   1922,  by 

Vanity  Fair  Publishing  Co. 

Copyright,   1922,  by 

Theatre  Magazine  Co. 


Printed  in  U.  S.  A. 


FOREWORD 

And  there  sat  in  the  circle  at  the  Players'  Club 
one  who  spoke  always  with  the  accent  of  au- 
thority, giving  firmly  the  impression  that  his 
own  story  and  the  story  of  the  theater  were  two 
inseparable  strands  of  the  same  woof.  Indeed, 
he  sometimes  referred  casually  and  hazily  to 
five  seasons  passed  at  dear  old  Drury  Lane.  But 
one  day  some  one  asked  him  point-blank  what 
his  roles  there  had  been.  He  had  to  explain  then 
that  his  talent  had  always  been  devoted  to  off- 
stage noises.  Finally  he  showed  a  Drury  Lane 
program,  yellowed  and  creased  and  wine-stained. 
There  his  name  was  at  the  end  of  the  cast  and 
opposite  it  was  the  role  assigned  him — Shouts 
and  Murmurs. Old  Fable. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTES  PAGE 

I     Behind  the  Scenes i 

1.  An  Emergency  Masterpiece     .      .  6 

2.  O.  Henry,  Playwright       ...  15 

3.  The  Shadow  on  a  Great  Success  31 

II     The  Knock  at  the  Stage-door.      .      .  41 

1.  "Born  of  Strolling  Players"  .      .  41 

2.  The    Swarming    Amateurs      .      .  53 

3.  Dr.  Gundelfinger 57 

III  Gunpowder   Plots 68 

IV  Capsule  Criticism 77 

V     For  the  Kiddies 88 

VI     Bitter  Memories 96 

VII     The  Terrible  Translation       .      .      .  104 

VIII     Another  Foreign  Author    .      .      .      .  iio 

IX     The     Celebrated     Decline     of     the 

Drama 125 

X    Presenting  "Fogg's  Ferry"       .     .      .  137 
vii 


viii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XI    Eugene  O'Neill   ..,..,.  144 

1.  "Beyond  the  Horizon"      .      .     >.  148 

2.  "The  Emperor  Jones"      .      .      .  156 

3.  "The  Hairj-  Ape" 161 

XII     Deburau,  Pere,  and  Guitry,  Fils  .      .  171 

XIII  The  Legend  of  "Peter  Pan"     .     .     .  185 

XIV  It  Was  "Trilby" 212 

XV     "Palmy    Days" 223 

XVI     Mr.  Tinney 236 

XVII     The  "Chauve-Souris" 247 

XVIII     Zowie;  or,  The  Curse  of  an  Akins 

Heart        .     ...    ...    .......  255 


SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 


SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES 

IN  proposing  here  a  little  journey  behind  the 
scenes  of  some  of  the  plays  over  which  we 
have  all  smiled  and  sighed,  I  am  suggesting  no 
actual  expedition  through  the  stage-door.  For  the 
ingenuous,  that  is  a  portal  of  disillusionment, 
leading  to  a  place  of  darkness  and  ropes  and 
strange  fusty  smells  and  stranger  subterfuges.  It 
is  a  journey  not  to  be  recommended. 

There  you  will  find  that  the  tossing,  wind- 
swept sea  of  "Ben-Hur"  is  but  a  painted  ocean, 
animated  from  beneath  by  a  number  of  needy 
youths  who  lie  on  their  backs  and  kick  for  a  small 
nightly  consideration.  There  you  will  find  that 
the  melon  they  eat  in  "The  First  Year"  is  but  a 
poor  papier-mache,  stuffed  (like  stuffed  celery) 
with  bits  of  inexpensive  apple  fed  to  the  actors 
by  a  scornful  and  thrifty  property-man. 


2  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

There  you  may  find,  as  I  did,  that  Henry  Clegg, 
that  mean,  shifty  little  sport  of  St.  John  Ervine's 
invention,  was,  most  incongruously,  a  rabid  col- 
lector of  Masefield's  "The  Faithful,"  of  which  I 
found  no  less  than  eighteen  copies  when  I  got  too 
near  Henry's  book-shelf  on  the  Garrick  stage. 
There  you  may  undergo  the  shock  of  seeing  the 
king,  who  had  swept  so  magnificently  and  so  care- 
lessly up  the  marble  staircase  of  his  palace,  now 
painfully  undertaking  the  descent  on  the  reverse 
side  of  the  scenery,  picking  up  his  ermine  like 
Victorian  petticoats  over  a  puddle  and  groping 
for  the  ladder  rungs  with  poor,  stringy,  unkingly 
shanks. 

There,  in  extreme  cases,  you  may  even  find  that 
the  queen,  who  from  the  sixth  row  on  the  aisle 
had  seemed  so  shy  and  delicately  fastidious  a 
lady,  is,  on  closer  inspection,  a  person  of  coarse 
mien,  a  good  fifteen  years  older  than  she  had 
seemed,  given,  when  provoked,  to  a  fishwife's 
vocabulary  and  prone,  when  depressed,  to  finding 
solace  in  gin. 

And  you  yourself  are  likely  to  appear  in  an 
unfavorable  light  and  even  to  have  your  mission 
misinterpreted.  I  am  thinking  sourly  of  one  eve- 
ning when  an  innocent  errand  took  me  back-stage 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  3 

and  I  was  somewhat  violently  mistaken  for  a 
process-server  in  pursuit  of  the  wage  earned  there 
weekly  by  the  talented  actress  who  was  ruined 
each  night  in  the  antecedent  action  of  the  play 
then  in  the  bills.  And  I  think  there  is  a  moral 
for  all  of  us  to  ponder  in  the  back-stage  mishap 
which  befell  Charles  Hanson  Towne,  poet,  bon 
vivant^  and  some  time  editor  of  "McClure's 
Magazine." 

For  years  Mr.  Towne  had  cherished  an  ardent 
admiration  for  Mrs.  Fiske.  He  longed  to  know 
her,  yet,  while  his  wanderings  in  the  city  had 
brought  him  at  one  time  or  another  into  converse 
with  most  of  the  players  of  the  day,  it  so  hap- 
pened that  he  never  encountered  Mrs.  Fiske,  who 
is  the  lady  of  the  byways,  never  easy  to  find. 
Finally,  however,  his  great  chance  came.  At 
Henry  Miller's  Theater  in  New  York  there  was 
to  be  a  benefit,  one  of  those  endless  benefits  which 
constituted  New  York's  share  of  the  burden  of 
the  war.  Mr.  Towne  was  on  the  committee  of 
arrangements  and  Mrs.  Fiske  was  to  be  on  the 
program.  While  she  was  on  the  stage,  reading 
a  poem  probably,  he  planted  himself  in  the  wings, 
beneath  the  switchboard,  ready  to  waylay  her 
when  she  should  come  off.     Off  she  came  and 


4  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

there  was  Mr.  Towne  blocking  her  path.  *'Mrs. 
Fiske,"  he  said,  and  then  poured  out,  in  lyric 
prose,  the  admiration  he  had  been  nourishing 
these  many  years.  It  was,  I  have  since  heard,  a 
lovely  speech,  and  well  delivered,  I  am  sure.  At 
the  end  of  it  Mrs.  Fiske  tapped  him  affably  on  the 
arm  with  her  lorgnette,  gave  him  one  rewarding, 
devastating  smile,  and,  as  she  tripped  off  to  her 
dressing-room,  murmured:  "Thank  you,  Mr. 
Electrician." 

No,  an  actual  journey  back-stage  is  not  to  be 
recommended,.  I  am  suggesting  rather  an  excur- 
sion among  the  circumstances  which  have  deter- 
mined certain  of  the  plays  of  to-day,  a  look  into 
the  biographies  of  certain  tragedies  and  comedies 
which  are  alive  now  in  the  theater  here  or  abroad. 
Of  every  play  that  finds  its  way  to  an  audience 
in  New  York  or  London,  a  story  of  mishap  and 
aspiration  might  be  told,  a  story  unknown  to  the 
fellow  who  sees  only  what  is  to  be  seen  within 
the  frame  of  the  proscenium  arch,  but  which,  if 
known,  would,  I  think,  add  measurably  to  his 
pleasure  in  the  memories  of  the  performance. 

I  am  uneasily  aware  that  such  pokings  about 
into  the  invisible  regions  of  the  theater  are  un- 
known in  the  high  and  dry  places  of  dramatic 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  5 

criticism,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  they  are  not 
illegitimate.  I  suspect  they  are  considered  a  trifle 
infra  dig.,  but  they  furnish  pleasant  excursions 
and,  it  seems  to  me,  legitimate  ones.  Of  course, 
if  the  playwright  under  examination  is  dead,  it 
is  not  considered  too  inquisitive  and  journalistic 
to  weave  some  of  the  circumstances  of  his  life  into 
the  accounts  of  his  work,  and  if  he  has  been  dead 
so  long  that  you  cannot  find  out  anything  about 
him  then  your  mere  attempt  to  do  so  will  be  re- 
warded with  at  least  one  LL.D.  But  if  he  is 
alive  and  you  can  conduct  your  research  by  no 
more  difficult  and  ingenious  a  process  than  that 
of  walking  down  the  street  and  asking  him,  why, 
then  it  just  is  n't  done. 

For  my  own  part,  I  like  to  know  of  "The  Green 
Goddess,"  for  instance,  that  the  veteran  and  pre- 
viously blameless  dramatic  critic  who  wrote  it 
was  moved  to  do  so  because  he  dreamed  its 
scenario.  I  like  to  know  of  the  pensive 
"Deburau"  that  it  was  written  by  a  farceur  in  the 
belief  that  he  had  only  a  year  left  to  live  on 
earth.  I  like  to  review  O'Neill's  plays  in  terms 
of  his  unusual  heritage  and  his  unusual  prepara- 
tions, and  I  believe  that  some  reference  to  that 
heritage  and  some  account  of  his  sea-rovings  be- 


6  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

long  in  any  decently  communicative  review  of  an 
O'Neill  play  as  it  comes  along.  Of  such  in- 
quiries and  such  reports  the  pages  of  this  book 
are  full. 


An  Emergency  Masterpiece 

OUIETLY,  modestly,  with  none  of  the  pre- 
liminary boasting  which  is  so  often  the 
work  of  the  weaker  psychologists  of  the  theater, 
a  little  homespun  comedy  sneaked  into  New  York 
in  October,  1920,  and  established  itself  overnight 
as  one  of  the  best,  if  not  the  best,  ever  written  by 
an  American.  It  is  called  "The  First  Year"  and 
is  the  work  of  Frank  Craven.  He  has  fashioned 
for  himself  a  piece  so  unpretentious,  so  true,  and 
so  enormously  amusing  that  it  will  find  a  response 
and  a  welcome  in  every  American  town  that  is 
big  enough  to  have  a  theater  at  all.  If  the  ordi- 
narily successful  comedy  could  run,  or  at  least 
hobble,  a  whole  season  on  Broadway,  there  seemed 
to  be  no  good  reason  why  "The  First  Year"  should 
not  run  forever. 

The  words  of  the  title  refer  to  the  fact  that  the 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  7 

first  year  of  married  life  is  the  hardest,  that  a 
girl  can  never  really  know  whether  she  has  con- 
fided herself  to  the  right  man  until  after  she  has 
lived  with  him  for  a  while,  when,  after  consider- 
able regrets  and  misgivings,  it  is  more  likely  than 
not  to  dawn  on  her  that  her  choice  was  somehow 
good.  The  slightly  tipsy  and  exceedingly  dis- 
consolate young  husband,  in  the  midst  of  their 
first  serious  quarrel,  sadly  advises  their  dusky 
hand-maiden,  who  has  "got  a  offer,"  to  "begin 
her  marriage  with  the  second  year." 

This  thm  trickle  of  orthodox  philosophy  runs 
through  a  play  that  is  as  simple  and  wholesome 
and  familiar  and  American  as  a  plate  of  wheat 
cakes  or  a  book  by  Louisa  Alcott.  It  is  a  comedy 
of  every-day  domestic  life  in  a  small  town  that 
shows  the  kind  of  observation  which  salted  "The 
Rise  of  Silas  Lapham"  and  the  kind  of  homely 
humor  which  flavors  a  Briggs  cartoon. 

Usually  when  our  dramatists  write  of  the  forest 
primeval  they  do  so  from  the  vantage-point  of  a 
Broadway  hotel,  composing  their  thoughts  to  the 
soughing  of  an  electric  fan  and  the  gentle  plash 
of  ice  in  a  tall  drink.  When  they  write  of  small 
towns,  it  is  in  memory  of  painful  one-night  stands, 
and  they  cut  their  characters  out  of  the  comic 


8  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

papers,  so  that  we  have  the  recurrent  comedy 
sheriff  and  the  whole  horrid  tribe  of  gosh-dem 
dramaturgy.  The  author  of  "The  First  Year," 
on  the  other  hand,  has  seemingly  thought  to  draw 
his  material  from  life.    It  was  a  good  idea. 

Here  we  have  a  play  so  natural  that  all  around 
you  in  the  audience  you  can  see  people  nudging 
each  other  and  hear  them  whispering:  "Isn't 
that  just  like  us !" — a  play  so  utterly  untheatrical 
that  it  gets  breathless  over  such  humdrum  crises 
as  the  serving  of  the  soup  before  the  melons. 

Yet  "The  First  Year"  is  the  work  of  a  Broad- 
way actor — the  nervous  rush  work  of  an  actor 
frankly  in  need  of  a  job. 

That  such  a  play  should  have  come  to  us  from 
such  a  person  is  only  superficially  surprising. 
Back  of  "The  First  Year"  are  all  the  conditions 
which  make  (and  always  have  made)  for  good 
work  in  the  theater.  Such  work,  from  Shakspere's 
day  down  to  John  Drinkwater's,  has  always  been 
done  by  people  who  were  of  the  theater  and  yet 
not  of  it,  playwrights  and  players  who  were 
workers  within  the  theater's  walls  and  yet  some- 
how had  learned,  mentally  or  physically,  to  get 
away  from  it. 

To  begin  with,  Frank  Craven  was  born  of  show 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  9 

folks.  They  say  his  lineage  can  be  traced  direct 
to  that  eighteenth-century  giant  of  the  English 
circus  who,  after  his  retirement,  set  up  the 
Craven's  Head  Inn  in  Covent  Garden.  But,  any- 
way, his  father  and  mother  were  modest  troupers 
in  the  theater  of  the  seventies  and  eighties  and 
were  playing  with  the  Nat  Goodwin-Eliza 
Weathersby  Froliques  when  Mrs.  Craven  had  to 
drop  out  of  the  cast  in  time  to  permit  Frank's 
advent  into  the  world.  She  caught  up  with  the 
company  a  little  later  and  Jennie  Weathersby 
stood  sponsor  at  his  christening.  When  his  first 
play,  "Too  Many  Cooks,"  was  staged  on  Broad- 
way seven  years  ago,  one  of  the  best  performances 
in  it  was  given  by  the  author's  godmother. 

Craven  seems  to  have  spoken  his  first  lines  from 
the  stage  as  soon  as  possible  after  his  learning 
to  speak  at  all.  That  was  when  he  was  three,  and 
the  play  was  that  trusty  old  stand-by,  "The  Silver 
King."  Afterward  he  played  many  parts,  often 
a  mere  walking  gentleman,  or  rather  toddling 
gentleman,  going  on  in  his  mother's  wake,  as 
when,  for  instance,  his  father  and  mother  acted 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Micaivber  and  Master  Craven 
played  one  of  the  many  reasons  why  that  great 
lady  would  never  desert  Mr.  Micmvber. 


10  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

Those  were  the  days  when  it  was  an  established 
New  England  custom  for  needy  troupers  to  take 
a  town  hall  or  op'ry-house  for  Thanksgiving  or 
Christmas  and  put  on  a  show  in  the  hope  of  pay- 
ing for  their  own  festal  meals  thereby.  Of  such 
"turkey  dates,"  as  they  were  called,  the  Cravens 
kept  many.  They  would  get  through  the  lean 
months  somehow  as  summer  boarders,  and  it  was 
at  such  a  farm-house  near  Reading,  Massachu- 
setts, that  young  Craven  was  deposited  to  grow 
up  and  go  to  school. 

From  a  youngster  of  five  to  a  sapling  of 
eighteen  he  was  a  farm  boy  doing  all  the  chores 
and  going  through  all  the  phases  of  young  Jack 
Hazard,  riding  old  Dobbin  bareback  to  the 
meadow  and  melting  away  each  summer  when  the 
hay  had  to  be  pitched  to  the  high,  stifling  mow. 
In  winter  he  went  to  the  district  school  two  miles 
from  home,  where  there  would  be  an  attendance 
of  as  many  as  thirteen  pupils  on  those  days  when 
the  snow-drifts  did  not  block  the  roads  or  when 
the  needs  of  spring  plowing  did  not  decimate  the 
roll.  Often  only  two  pupils  made  the  grade  (as 
you  might  say),  and  one  of  these  would  usually 
be  Craven.  You  may  be  uneasily  aware  that  this 
sounds  like  a  biography  leading  straight  to  the 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  ii 

White  House  rather  than  to  the  playhouse,  but 
whether  or  not  Craven  would  rather  be  right  than 
President,  you  may  be  dead  sure  that  he  would 
rather  be  playwright  than  President. 

He  was  eighteen  and  working  in  the  canning 
factory  when  chance  ran  him  into  an  old  stage 
friend  of  his  folks,  and  the  first  thing  he  knew 
they  were  for  trying  him  out  as  an  actor.  The 
play,  as  it  happens,  was  still  "The  Silver  King," 
for  theatrical  fare  in  America  had  undergone  no 
revolutionary  changes  in  the  intervening  fifteen 
years.  Thus  Craven  went  back  to  the  stage, 
carrying  with  him  memories  and  instincts  and 
sympathies  he  could  not  have  had  if  he  had  never 
left  it.  Many  of  these  appear  in  "The  First 
Year." 

This  comedy  of  his  is  full  of  the  little  touches 
of  lifelikeness  which  keep  an  audience  warm  with 
what,  for  want  of  a  defter  term,  must  Be  called 
the  emotion  of  recognition.  They  are  such 
vignettes  of  humanity  as  writers  note  and  tuck 
away  in  their  memories  meaning  to  use  some  time. 
You  would  swear  "The  First  Year"  was  a  play 
over  which  its  author  had  thus  puttered  lovingly 
for  many  a  season.  It  is,  therefore,  the  more  dis- 
concerting to  learn  that  Craven  wrote  it  not  be- 


12  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

cause,  after  long  accumulation,  it  fairly  clamored 
for  expression,  but  because  no  one  seemed  to  be 
offering  him  a  part  and  he  was  in  need  of  one; 
that  he  wrote  it  in  a  great  hurry  because  that  need 
was  urgent.  He  began  it  in  the  middle  of  the 
night  and  in  a  time  of  great  discouragement  just 
twelve  weeks  before  the  New  York  premiere. 

It  had  been  a  long  time  since  he  had  had  any 
success  in  the  theater.  He  had  tried  two  plays  and 
they  had  failed.  He  had  ventured  to  London, 
where  an  old  favorite  of  his,  "Too  Many  Cooks," 
was  being  put  on  with  an  otherwise  English  cast 
and  under  a*  contract  so  disadvantageous  that, 
after  a  faltering  run  of  two  weeks,  it  was  ruth- 
lessly evicted.  Suffering  by  this  time  from  a  seri- 
ous inferiority  complex  and  incidentally  from  an 
acute  shortage  of  funds,  he  came  home  and  went 
to  work  on  a  new  play,  and  when  two  acts  were 
written  he  carried  them  around  one  Sunday  eve- 
ning to  read  them  aloud  to  those  shrewd  men  of 
the  theater,  John  Golden  and  Winchell  Smith, 
as  prospective  producers. 

They  listened  politely,  suggested  some  changes, 
said  they  would  n't  mind  hearing  the  last  act  when 
he  had  finished  it,  and  helped  him  to  a  cab.  When 
the   tottering   Craven    reached   home,    he    said: 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  13 

"Well,  that  V  cold  I"  and  buried  the  unfinished 
script  in  his  mental  scrap-basket. 

He  would  try  once  more.  What  should  it  be 
about?  Well,  once  when  he  and  Mrs.  Craven 
had  been  playing  pinocle  in  a  Chicago  hotel,  they 
were  talking  about  the  first  year  of  married  life 
being  the  stormy  one,  and  Craven  said  that  it 
might  serve  as  a  good  theme  for  a  play  some  time. 
Out  of  his  subconsciousness  he  now  fished  that 
random  idea,  sketched  a  rough  scenario,  sent  for 
some  black  coffee,  put  his  pencil  to  paper,  shut  his 
eyes,  saw  a  small-town  sitting-room  at  lamplight 
time,  saw  the  father  reading  the  local  paper,  the 
mother  sewing,  the  daughter  strumming  at  the 
piano  while  she  waited  for  the  grist  of  evening 
callers.  He  listened.  They  began  to  talk.  He 
began  to  write.  The  first  act,  pretty  much  as 
you  see  it  now,  was  finished  before  he  went  to 
bed. 

If  nowadays  Craven  is  being  complimented  for 
this  work  ground  out  under  great  pressure,  if  he 
is  being  petted  and  puffed  for  his  great  wisdom 
and  penetration  in  devising  certain  touches  and 
twists  which,  as  a  matter  of  honest  fact,  he  shoved 
hurriedly  into  his  play  without  thinking  about 
them,  why,  it  only  evens  up  for  laborious  past 


14         SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

efforts  of  his  which  somehow  went  unnoticed,  and 
it  is,  in  his  own  case,  history  repeating  itself. 

Craven's  biggest  success  as  an  actor  was  scored 
at  the  Playhouse  that  September  night  in  1911 
when  he  walked  off  with  most  of  the  honors  of 
George  Broadhurst's  vigorous  and  even  violent 
comedy,  "Bought  and  Paid  For."  His  role  then 
was  that  of  Jimmy  Gilley^  the  fourteen-dollar-a- 
week  shipping-clerk  who  adhered  so  expertly  to 
his  wealthy  brother-in-law.  It  was  an  uncom- 
monly droll  performance,  which  he  played  to  the 
hilt.  The  next  morning  the  papers  were  full  of 
him,  and  what  amused  him  most  was  the  critical 
approval  paid  his  painstaking  costume,  which  was 
at  once  sporty  and  threadbare,  even  to  the  socks. 
Actually  his  socks  got  a  notice  all  by  themselves 
as  a  supremely  ingenious  bit  of  theatrical  costum- 
ing. Of  course  Craven  smiled  and  buried  deep 
the  fact  that  he  had  selected  those  socks  because 
they  were  the  only  pair  he  had  in  the  world. 

It  had  been  a  lean  period  before  that  rescuing 
role  of  Jimmy  Gilley  came  along,  His  mother's 
last  illness  had  come  just  the  summer  before,  and 
from  her  high  rooms  in  Forty-eighth  Street  he  had 
been  wont  to  look  down  to  where  the  builders 
were  completing  the  Playhouse  in  time  for  the 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  15 

new  theatrical  year.  He  had  grinned  when  she 
used  to  say  cheerily :  "You  never  can  tell,  Frank. 
You  might  play  there  some  time." 

But  so  it  came  to  pass.  The  play  of  Broad- 
hurst's  was  chosen  to  open  the  new  theater.  Be- 
fore the  premiere,  Mrs.  Craven  had  died.  The 
night  of  the  opening  Craven,  waiting  for  the  first 
curtain  call,  sneaked  out  on  the  fire-escape  to  steal 
a  few  puffs  from  a  cigarette.  Dimly  in  the  dark- 
ness above  he  could  see  the  window  that  had  been 
hers  and  he  stood  staring  up  toward  it  till  the  call 
came.  "Well,"  he  said,  blowing  a  kiss  up  into 
the  darkness,  as  he  turned  to  obey,  "wish  me  good 
luck."  And  so,  with  a  trembling  in  his  knees 
but  a  benediction  in  his  heart,  he  started  for  the 
scene  that  was  to  lift  him  to  the  stars. 


2 
O.  Henry,  Playwright 

WHEN,  if  ever,  they  call  for  a  new  edition 
of  that  amiable  biography  of  O.  Henry 
by  C.  Alonso  Smith,  there  should  be  added  a  chap- 
ter about  his  adventures  as  a  playwright.  To  be 
sure,  in  the  final  stretch  of  this  official  history  of 


i6         SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

Sydney  Porter,  the  recording  professor  does  say 
parenthetically:  'Tlans  for  a  novel  and  a  play 
were  also  much  in  his  mind  at  this  time,  but  no 
progress  was  made  in  actual  construction."  Noth- 
ing, however,  is  vouchsafed  as  to  what  that  play 
was,  how  it  got  into  the  aforesaid  mind  in  the 
first  place,  and  why  it  never  came  out.  It  never 
did  come  out,  for,  as  a  playwright,  O.  Henry 
was  a  little  brother  to  that  forlorn  fellow  who 
figures  in  Augustus  Thomas's  reminiscences  and 
whose  successive  lodgings  in  New  York  were  al- 
ways traceable  by  stray  bits  of  manuscript  which 
had  never  progressed  beyond  the  brave  begin- 
ning: "Act  One,  Scene  One:  A  Ruined  Garden." 
To  that  family  of  dramatists  O.  Henry  belonged. 
It  was  a  large  family.    It  still  is. 

This  is  really  George  Tyler's  story.  He  is  one 
of  those  managers  who  are  ever  and  always  ex- 
ploring for  playwrights  and  players  where  no  one 
else  has  looked.  His  ardor  has  always  been  ad- 
dressed to  the  task  of  growing  a  dramatist  where 
only  a  novelist  grew  before.  He  and  Kipling, 
for  instance,  have  spent  unchronicled  hours  in 
conference  over  a  Mulvaney  play.  But  that  is 
another  story.  Tyler  would,  I  think,  derive  more 
heart-warming  satisfaction  out  of  extracting  four 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  17 

acts  from  some  reluctant  teller  of  tales  than  out 
of  any  contract  he  could  sign  with  the  most  tested 
and  chronically  successful  dramatist  of  the  day. 
And  just  as  the  late  Charles  Frohman,  by  an  in- 
corrigible and  disarming  doggedness,  finally 
badgered  the  bewildered  Barrie  into  writing  for 
the  theater,  so  Tyler  hoped  to  make  a  playwright 
of  O.  Henry.  He  never  encountered  him  on  a 
street-corner  or  dropped  him  a  note  about  one 
of  his  stories  without  nagging  him  to  try  his  hand 
at  a  play. 

Every  O.  Henry  story  naturally  prompted  such 
a  hope.  Every  one  of  them  fairly  tingled  with 
the  stuff  of  which  plays  are  made,  and  much  of 
that  stuff,  rented  or  borrowed  or  blandly  stolen, 
has  since  found  its  way  into  theaters  all  over  the 
world.  But  it  was  much  easier  to  write  a  story, 
and  for  a  while  the  Tyler  blandishments  had  no 
visible  effect.  The  drowsy  dramatist  that  is  prob- 
ably in  all  of  us,  and  that  was  certainly  in  O. 
Henry,  stirred  uneasily  in  response  to  the  Tyler 
proddings,  but  never  really  wakened. 

O.  Henry's  connection  with  the  theater  had 
been  slight  and  discouraging.  He  had,  in  a  needy 
moment,  written  the  libretto  of  a  musical  comedy 
called  "Lo,"  for  which  Franklin  P.  Adams  in- 


i8  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

genuously  fashioned  the  lyrics  and  A.  Baldwin 
Sloane  the  music — a  promising  but  impractical 
triumvirate  whose  first  and  only  effort  started 
boldly  out  from  Chicago,  wandered  erratically 
around  the  Middle  West  for  fourteen  weeks,  and 
then  died  somewhere,  alone,  neglected,  and  un- 
sung. New  York  never  saw  it,  and  neither,  for 
that  matter,  did  O.  Henry. 

Then,  in  a  sudden  fit  of  industry,  he  drew  up 
a  scenario  for  a  comedy,  perhaps  with  the  solemn 
intention  of  writing  it,  but  more  probably  in  the 
hope  that  it  would  impress  the  importunate  Tyler 
and  lead  to  a  small  advance  of  cash.  Indeed, 
there  is  still  in  existence  the  back  of  an  envelope 
which  served  as  ledger  wherein  were  noted  the 
sums,  amounting  in  all  to  more  than  $  1 200,  that 
were  doled  out  to  O.  Henry  to  keep  his  spirits  up 
and  in  the  faint  hope  that  he  might  actually  get 
around  some  day  to  writing  that  comedy. 

The  stories  O.  Henry  wrote,  their  abundance, 
and  their  spasmodic  unevenness  can  never  be 
understood  by  one  who  does  not  keep  in  mind 
the  fact  that  he  was  chronically  penniless  and  for- 
ever dashing  off  pieces  either  to  quiet  some  editor 
who  had  lent  him  money  or  to  extract  himself 
from    pawn    at    some    hotel.     This    continuous 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  19 

pauperism  is  usually  explained  in  one  of  two  ways, 
either  that  he  tossed  largesse  right  and  left  like 
some  latter-day  Robin  Hood  or  that  his  pockets 
were  continuously  drained  by  blackmailers  whose 
silence  was  necessary  to  his  peace.  But  really  no 
explanation  is  urgent,  for  O.  Henry  earned  com- 
paratively little  money  even  in  his  most  success- 
ful years,  and  the  great  sums  which  his  works 
eventually  brought  did  not  begin  to  stream  in 
until  after  his  death. 

It  was  from  such  a  fellow  that  Tyler  received 
at  last  the  somewhat  cloudy  scenario  of  a  comedy 
to  be  based  on  "The  World  and  the  Door,"  a 
story  which  appears  now  as  the  first  one  in  the 
posthumous  collection  called  "Whirligigs."  That 
story  has  as  its  setting  one  of  those  little  lazy 
colonies  of  expatriates  in  South  America — the 
wistful  colonies  of  which  every  member  has  a  good 
legal  reason  for  not  returning  to  the  United 
States.  O.  Henry  had  seen  them  at  close  range 
in  the  unhappy  days  when  he  and  the  Jennings 
brothers  were  themselves  fugitives  from  justice. 
"The  World  and  the  Door"  spins  a  romance  be- 
tween a  New  Yorker,  who  had  shot  down  a  fel- 
low-roisterer in  a  drunken  brawl,  and  a  lovely 
woman,  who  had  given  aconite  to  her  husband 


20  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

and  left  hurriedly  for  foreign  parts.  The  tale 
reaches  its  acute  crisis  when  the  two  fugitives 
discover  that  neither  victim  died  and  that  both 
of  them  are  free  to  abandon  romance  and  return 
to  civilization.  From  that  story  the  scenario 
was  made  and  set  aside  to  simmer. 

Then  one  Sunday  morning,  at  a  time  when 
H.  B.  Warner,  a  Tyler  star,  was  involved  in  a 
moribund  entertainment  that  was  sinking  rapidly 
out  in  Chicago,  in  walked  Tyler's  father  all  aglow 
over  a  new  volume  of  O.  Henry  stories.  It  con- 
tained the  yarn  which  every  one  knows  as  "A 
Retrieved  Reformation."  I  find  out  when  from 
time  to  time  polls  are  solemnly  opened  to  decide 
which  was  the  best  of  all  he  wrote,  the  vote  goes 
either  to  that  fragment,  so  Dickensy  in  its  flavor, 
"An  Unfinished  Story,"  or  to  that  rarer  and  more 
delicate  work,  "A  Municipal  Report."  (My  own 
choice  would  always  be  for  "The  Skylight 
Room.")  But  I  suppose  there  is  no  doubt  that 
"A  Retrieved  Reformation"  is  the  most  widely 
known  of  all  the  tales  O.  Henry  told.  It  is  the 
story  of  Jimmy  Valentine^  ex-convict  and  retired 
3afe  cracker,  who,  having  reformed  and  settled 
down  as  a  bank  cashier,  has  so  artfully  builded 
his  alias  that  the  pursuing  detective  cannot  prove 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  21 

his  identity.  Just  in  the  moment  when  this 
avenger  is  turning  away,  baffled,  panic  word  is 
rushed  in  that  a  child  has  been  locked  by  accident 
in  the  bank's  new  vault,  a  child  sure  to  die  of 
suffocation  unless,  by  some  miracle,  there  can  be 
found  in  time  one  of  the  half-dozen  men  in  the 
world  so  expert  in  safe  cracking  that,  with  eyes 
blindfolded  and  fingers  sensitized,  they  can  de- 
cipher any  combination.  Of  course  the  heroic 
Valentine  must  volunteer  his  buried  talent  and, 
by  his  success  at  it,  confess  the  suspected  identity. 
And  of  course,  since  O.  Henry  was  a  spinner  of 
fairy-tales,  the  detective  does  not  laugh  cynically 
and  arrest  the  lad,  but  bursts,  instead,  into  affect- 
ing tears  and  goes  pensively  away  forever. 

Tyler  read  that  story,  shut  the  book  with  a 
snap,  and  began  telegraphing  hotly  in  everv'  di- 
rection. Out  in  Chicago  was  Warner  needing  a 
new  play  as  a  drooping  flower  needs  water.  One 
message  went  to  O.  Henry,  offering  $500  for  the 
dramatic  rights.  The  offer  was  accepted  with 
pathetic  promptitude,  first  by  wire  and  then  by 
the  following  letter: 


22  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

Asheville,  N.  C,  October  23,  1909. 
Mr.  George  C.  Tyler, 
Liebler  &  Co., 
N.  Y.  City. 

My  dear  Mr.  Tyler:  I  hereby  transfer  to  you  the 
entire  dramatic  rights  of  the  story  you  write  me  about 
— the  title  is  "A  Retrieved  Reformation."  I  am  glad 
to  be  able  to  hand  you  over  anything  that  you  might  be 
able  to  use. 

But  I  want  you  to  let  the  $500  that  I  owe  you  still 
remain  owing,  for  I  am  going  to  write  that  play  yet 
and  soon.  I  've  been  in  bad  shape  for  a  long  time,  both 
as  to  writing  and  refunding.  I  'm  wrestling  with  a  bad 
case  of  neurasthenia  (so  the  doctor  says),  but  I'm  get- 
ting back  into  good  shape  again.  I  am  living  about  six 
miles  out  of  Asheville  and  spend  most  of  the  time  climb- 
ing hills  and  living  out  of  doors.  I  have  knocked  off 
twenty  pounds  weight.  I  eat  like  a  drayman  and  don't 
know  what  booze  tastes  like.  In  fact,  I  '11  be  better 
than  ever  in  another  week  or  two. 

I  got  out  the  scenario  of  "The  World  and  the  Door" 
some  days  ago  and  began  to  plan  out  the  acts  and  scenes. 
I  '11  surprise  you  with  it  as  soon  as  I  get  down  to  hard 
work. 

I  deeply  appreciate  your  leniency  and  kindness  and 
intend  to  "come  up  to  scratch"  yet  with  the  goods. 

So  the  dramatic  rights  of  the  "Retrieved  Reforma- 
tion" are  yours  and  if  you  strike  another  story  you  like 
take  it  too. 

In  the  meantime,  I  owe  you  $500,  and  am  going  to 

pay   it   and   remain      „.  , 

bmcerely  yours, 

Sydney  Porter. 

P.  S.     If  you  want  a  more  formal  assignment  of  the 

rights  of  the  story,  send  on  the  papers  and  I  will  sign 

'em. 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  23 

Tyler  then  sent  for  Paul  Armstrong,  a  wise  old 
artisan  of  the  theater,  who  could  be  counted  on  to 
turn  the  story  into  a  play  without  spilling  any- 
thing, and  who  could  also  be  expected  to  do  it 
quickly,  as  he  too  was  probably  without  funds. 
Armstrong  read  the  story,  agreed  to  try  his  hand 
at  it,  and  vanished.  It  turned  out  later  that  he 
had  been  locked  up  in  a  room  at  the  Hotel  Algon- 
quin, but  for  a  week  there  was  no  signal  from 
him  and  it  was  upon  an  impresario  fuming  with 
impatience  and  uneasiness  that  he  sauntered  non- 
chalantly in  at  the  end  of  that  week.  Tyler 
launched  at  once  on  a  burning  speech  in  which 
he  gave  his  opinion  of  Broadway  as  a  habitat  for 
men  that  thought  they  were  playwrights,  his  opin- 
ion of  the  faithless  and  the  irresponsible  denizens 
of  that  territory,  and  his  opinion  of  his  own  bitter 
and  thankless  job,  which,  he  said,  he  was  minded 
to  forsake,  then  and  there,  in  favor  of  farming. 
Which  oration  Armstrong  interrupted  by  pro- 
ducing from  his  ulster  the  completed  four-act 
manuscript  of  a  melodrama,  the  first  of  the  crook 
plays,  ''Alias  Jimmy  Valentine."  The  next  day 
they  were  all  on  their  way  to  Chicago,  and  eleven 
days  later  the  piece  was  produced  there.  Within 
three  weeks,  therefore,  from  Tyler's  first  reading 


24  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

of  "A  Retrieved  Reformation"  its  dramatization 
began  a  run  which  was  to  make  reputations  for 
some  people  and  fortunes  for  others,  which  was  to 
tweak  and  tantalize  playgoers  all  over  America, 
England,  France,  Spain,  and  South  Africa,  and 
which  was  to  breed  a  very  epidemic  of  plays  in 
which  no  self-respecting  protagonist  would  think 
of  approaching  the  first  act  without  a  neat  murder 
or  at  least  a  bank  robbery  to  his  credit. 

I  often  think  how  much  it  adds  to  a  playgoer's 
interest  in  a  piece  to  know  something  of  how  it 
came  to  be  written,  something  of  the  source  of  its 
incident  and  its  point  of  view,  something,  that  is, 
of  its  own  biography.  Consider  those  first-night- 
ers in  Chicago  who  encountered  Jimmy  Valentine 
in  the  Sing  Sing  scene,  met  with  him  the  sorry 
procession  of  prison  types,  and  finally  followed 
him  in  his  precarious  flight  into  respectability. 
How  they  would  have  gaped  had  they  known 
(and  probably  not  more  than  one  or  two  of  them 
even  guessed)  that  this,  in  a  sense,  was  O.  Henry's 
own  story,  that  he  too  had  been  a  convicted  felon, 
that  he  had  come  to  know  the  original  of  Jimmy 
Valentine  when  they  were  both  in  prison  together 
down  in  Texas — and  that  at  that  very  time,  he, 
like  Jimmy^  was  building  with  his  own  hands  a 
new  identity  in  a  new  world! 


1 
^ 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  25 

If  this  missing  chapter  ever  does  find  its  way 
into  the  O.  Henry  biography,  there  ought,  I  sup- 
pose, to  be  a  foot-note  about  the  actress  picked 
up  out  of  space  to  play  the  leading  feminine  role. 
For  "Alias  Jimmy  Valentine,"  that  company  of 
Warner's  out  in  Chicago  would  do  well  enough; 
but  in  addition  to  the  play,  the  demands  of  its 
cast  also  required  a  new  leading  woman.  Some 
one  mentioned  casually  that  there  was  a  promis- 
ing new-comer  to  be  seen  that  very  afternoon  in 
a  special  matinee  somewhere  on  Broadway.  Tyler 
dropped  in,  took  one  look,  and  engaged  her  forth' 
with — a  lovely,  droll,  wide-eyed  young  actress 
who  had  just  come  in  out  of  the  provinces  and  who 
was  already  foot-sore  from  her  weary  rounds  of 
the  managers'  offices  in  an  effort  to  persuade  some 
one  that  she  knew  how  to  act.  Her  name  was 
Laurette  Taylor. 

But  that  is  a  foot-note.  And  ''Alias  Jimmy 
Valentine"  itself  is  important  in  the  story  of  O. 
Henry  as  a  playwright  only  because  it  yielded 
Paul  Armstrong  something  like  $100,000,  while 
it  yielded  O.  Henry,  whose  idea  it  had  been, 
nothing  like  that  at  all.  He  made  just  $500  out 
of  it.  This  painful  discrepancy  was  something 
which  the  guileful  Tyler  meant  that  O.  Henry 
should  not  be  allowed  to  forget.     Every  week. 


26  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

when  the  official  copy  of  the  box-office  statement 
went  through  the  mails  to  Armstrong  as  a  matter 
of  routine,  a  duplicate  copy  was  mailed  to  O. 
Henry.  It  was,  of  course,  a  lean  time  in  which 
Armstrong  did  not  receive  each  week  more  for 
writing  the  play  than  O.  Henry  received  all  told 
for  having  invented  it.  After  a  little  succession 
of  such  weekly  reminders,  the  wear  and  tear  upon 
O.  Henry's  spirits  became  visible. 

Witness  this  letter  which  arrived  in  New  York 
early  in  1910: 

Asheville,  N.  C. 
Monday. 
My  dear  Mr.  Tyler, 

I  had  expected  to  be  in  New  York  before  this  but  I 
am  not.  I  have  been  putting  in  all  my  time  getting  in 
good  shape  for  future  campaigns,  and  doing  practically 
no  work  at  all.  Have  entirely  recovered  my  health  and 
feel  fine  and  fit.  I  have  done  barely  enough  writing  to 
keep  the  possum  from  the  door  since  I  've  been  down 
here,  but  I  think  I  have  gained  greatly  thereby. 

Got  a  little  proposition  to  make  to  you. 

If  you  '11  advance  me  $500,  I  '11  come  at  once  to  N.  Y., 
establish  myself  in  some  quiet  rural  spot  of  the  metrop- 
olis known  only  to  yourself  and  your  emissaries  and 
get  to  work  and  finish  a  play.  I  will  not  let  my  where- 
abouts or  even  the  fact  that  I  am  in  the  city  be  known 
to  any  one  but  you;  and  I  will  give  all  my  time  and 
energy  to  the  play. 

As  collateral,  I  can  only  make  over  to  you  the  dra- 
matic rights  of  all  my  stories  until  the  work  is  done. 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  27 

The  new  play  "Alias  J.  V."  has  inspired  me  to  believe 
I  can  do  something  for  both  of  us. 

If  you  will  do  this,  let  me  know  immediately  and  I 
will  come. 

Of  course  if  you  don't  care  to  do  it,  it  won't  affect 
our  future  relations.     But  I  want  to  get  in  the  game, 
and  I  '11  stick  to  you  exclusively  until  we  try  it  out. 
Yours  as  ever, 

Sydney  Porter. 
c/o  Jas.  S.  Coleman. 


The  answer  to  this  seems  to  have  been  cautious 
and  conditional,  for  further  explanation  soon 
started  north,  as  follows : 

Asheville,  N.  C.  1/25  '10 
My  dear  Mr.  Tyler: 

I  will  be  brief.  Why  I  want  the  money  in  a  lump 
sum  is  to  make  a  getaway  quick.  Your  proposition  is 
better  than  mine,  but  it  lacks  the  hastiness  and  expedi- 
tion necessary  to  a  big  theatrical  success.  As  I  told  you 
I  have  been  busy  down  here  for  about  four  months  get- 
ting rid  of  cirrhosis  of  the  liver,  fatty  degeneration  of  the 
heart  and  neurasthenia — none  of  which  troubles  I  have 
ever  had.  But  I  was  about  as  nervous  and  reflexactiony 
as  the  hind-leg  of  a  frog  as  shown  in  the  magazine- 
section  of  almost  any  Sunday  newspaper.  The  country 
and  the  mountains  have  been  worth  more  to  me  than 
money — I  am  almost  as  strong  and  tough  as  a  suffragette. 

But  I  have  (by  order  of  the  Old  Doctor)  avoided 
work  gladly  and  cheerfully.  Consequently  I  have  about 
as  much  money  on  hand  as  was  left  lying  around  the 
box-office  at  the  last  performance  of  "Lo." 

Now,  suppose  we  have  a  few  moments'  conversation 


^S  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

as  heart-to-heart  as  an  editorial  on  chicken-salad  in  the 
Ladies  Home  Journal  by  Edward  Everett  Hale. 

I  owe  something  in  the  neighborhood  of  $500  down 
here  that  should  and  shall  be  paid  before  the  obsequious 
porter  of  the  So.  Ry.  Co.  can  have  the  opportunity  of 
brushing  the  soot  off  the  window  sill  of  Mr.  Pullman's 
car  onto  the  left  knee  of  my  new  trousers.  I  'm  not 
after  money  now — it 's  transportation,  transportation  and 
a  chance  that  I  want.  I  can  work  the  proposition  out 
in  the  short  story  line :  but  it 's  slow,  Colonel,  slow.  I 
want  to  get  into  the  real  game,  and  I  '11  stake  my  reputa- 
tion as  the  best  short  story  writer  within  a  radius  of 
Asheville  that  we  can  pull  it  off. 

Here's  what  I  need  in  order  to  start  things  going. 

I  've  got  to  pay  up  everything  here  and  leave  a  small 
bunch  of  collateral  with  my  long-suffering  family  to 
enable  them  to  purchase  the  usual  cuisine  of  persimmons 
and  rabbits  for  a  while. 

I  will  do  this. 

If  you  will  send  me  the  necessary  sinews,  I  will  start 
for  N.  Y.  on  Wednesday  or  Thursday  of  next  week.  I 
will,  on  arrival,  secure  a  room  or  two  with  privilege  of 
bath  3  flights  above,  and  phone  you  the  next  morning. 
Thenceforth  I  am  yours  and  Mr.  Ford's  until  results 
have  been  accomplished.  I  will  place  all  my  time  at 
your  disposal  until  the  play  is  finished.  My  proposition 
IS  not  unselfish — I  expect  to  make  it  profitable  to  myself 
as  well  as  to  you. 

Proviso — 

Don't  give  it  away  to  any  nwigazine,  or  anybody  else, 
that  I  am  there.  I  will  be  in  retirement  and  working 
for  you  as  long  as  may  be  necessary.  My  mail  will  be 
sent  here  as  it  has  been,  and  forwarded  there.  My 
family  will  remain  here  during  the  summer.  .  .  .  They 
«eem  to  like  the  idea  of  my  returning  to  N.  Y.,  although 
1  have  been  reasonably  kind  to  them. 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  29 

Now,  listen. 

You  know  how  much  "front"  counts.  I  'm  not  afraid 
of  N.  Y.  police  or  editors:  but  if  I  arrive  there  in  a 
linen  suit,  with  'helmet  and  tennis  shoes,  what  would 
Big  Bill  Edwards  do  to  me  but  shovel  me  into  a  cart 
and  dump  me  into  the  East  River*? 

So  get  busy  with  your  telegraph  blanks.  Send  me 
$750  by  wire  when  you  get  this  and  I  '11  strike  N.  Y. 
Thursday  at  the  latest.  I  've  got  to  have  some  margin, 
and  you  '11  get  my  exclusive  services  thereby.  Take 
another  chance.     You  can't  lose. 

I  am  enclosing  as  a  rather  poor  collateral  the  rights 
to  my  stories. 

I  hate  to  make  any  new  dickers  with  the  magazine 
people  and  that 's  why  I  put  the  matter  so  strenuously 
up  to  you.  I  know  now  how  much  better  (financially) 
the  stage  business  is : — thanks  to  you. 

Tell  Oom  Paul  Armstrong  that  I  hope  he  '11  crack  the 
safe  for  all  it 's  worth  in  "Alias  Jimmy."  I  got  the 
press  notices  that  you  had  sent  me. 

I  'm  awfully  sorry  to  have  to  come  back  to  town  and 
write  a  better  play  than  Mr.  Armstrong  has — but  I  need 
the  money — he  won't  mind. 

With  best  regards, 

Sydney  Porter. 

c/o  Jas.  S.  Coleman. 

P.  S.  To  summarize — $750 — by  wire — not  by  an 
A.  D.  T. — satisfaction  guaranteed  or  money  refunded. 

This  appears  to  have  been  followed  breath- 
lessly by  a  telegram  which  read  thus: 

Like  to  have  funds.  Do  wire  to-day.  Will  positively 
be  there  on  time.    Have  cut  out  spending  and  Chianti. 

S.  P. 


30  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

Tyler  seems  to  have  thought  it  wisest  to  send 
only  a  part  of  the  sum  demanded  and  to  do  that 
by  mail.  By  the  end  of  February  this  glowing 
message  came  up  from  Asheville : 

Will  arrive  at  noon  Monday  if  four  hundred  wired 
to-day.  Exclusive  work  guaranteed  until  satisfactory 
results. 

Sydney  Porter. 

And  this  was  followed  by  one  even  more  urgent : 

Wire  balance.    Am  waiting  at  the  depot. 

Porter. 

So  Tyler  wired  the  balance,  but  the  promised 
telephone  message  from  the  modest  and  secluded 
lodgings  never  came.  The  first  tidings  came  from 
a  hospital,  to  which  O.  Henry  had  been  taken 
mortally  ill  with  pneumonia.  He  had  received 
the  money,  retained  the  margin,  and  started  north. 
But  once  he  had  found  himself  at  the  gates  of 
Bagdad,  he  had  stood  wide-eyed  for  a  moment 
and  then  drifted  happily  off  among  the  bazaars, 
stumbled  on  some  old  cronies,  and  given  himself 
over  to  celebration  of  his  return  from  exile. 
Tyler  never  saw  him  again.  And  the  great  Ameri- 
can play — "The  World  and  the  Door,"  a  comedy 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  31 

in  three  acts  by  the  author  of  "The  Four  Million" 
— was  never  written. 

3 

The  Shadow  on  a  Great  Success 

WHEN  "Enter  Madame"  slipped  quietly 
into  New  York  in  1920  and  established 
itself  overnight  as  one  of  the  triumphant  plays  of 
a  none-too-happy  season,  and  Gilda  Varesi,  who 
wrote  it  and  played  in  it,  awoke  next  morning  to 
find  herself  rather  more  famous  than  she  had 
dared  to  dream,  there  were  few  among  all  those 
rejoicing  with  her  who  saw  the  shadow  which  fell 
across  this  shining  success.  It  was  the  shadow 
that  is  known  as  "Too  late."  The  success  itself 
was  incontestable,  but  it  could  not  be  shared  by 
the  Madame  Varesi  about  whom,  and,  in  a  sense, 
for  whom,  the  play  was  written. 

"Enter  Madame"  is  a  comedy  of  temperament, 
a  humorous,  affectionate  study  of  the  tantrums 
and  tenderness  of  a  famous  prima  donna,  such  a 
baffling  and  enchanting  first  lady  of  the  opera  as 
Elena  Varesi,  whose  sweet  voice  and  overwhelm- 
ing charm  made  her  so  great  a  favorite  in  Rome 
and  Berlin  and  London  in  the  eighties.  Of  such 
stock  comes  this  daughter  of  hers,  this  Gilda  Va- 


32  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

resi.  Her  most  vivid  memories  of  her  mother  are 
of  a  radiant  lady  who,  when  her  engagements  per- 
mitted and  she  happened  to  think  of  it,  used  oc- 
casionally to  sweep  down  on  startled  Milan, 
where  her  two  daughters  were  left  in  the  care  of 
a  formidable  nurse.  There  would  be  a  shower  of 
gifts  and  endearments  and  enough  maternal  solici- 
tude to  last  all  year  crowded  tempestuously  into 
a  few  exciting  days.  Then  the  great  lady  would 
go  coursing  on  her  way,  perhaps  to  take  the  baths 
at  Aix-les-Bains,  perhaps  to  descend  on  London 
for  a  dazzling  engagement  at  Covent  Garden. 

It  is  with  just  such  a  whirlwind  domestic  inter- 
lude that  the  new  comedy  deals.  The  play  deals 
with  madame's  brief  visit  home,  a  lull  between 
engagements  in  Spain  and  South  America  which 
she  devotes  to  routing  from  her  lonesome  hus- 
band's mind  all  thought  of  taking  a  duller  but 
more  comfortable  wife  to  his  bosom.  He  had 
sworn  he  was  done  forever  with  this  trapezing 
around  the  world  in  her  train,  but  the  last  you  see 
of  him  he  is  starting  dutifully  for  Buenos  Aires 
and  carrying  her  dog  to  boot.  The  last  line  of 
the  play,  delivered  with  a  flourish,  is,  "Exit 
Madame." 

That  Gilda  Varesi  did  not  grow  up  to  grace 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  33 

some  provincial  stock  company  in  her  native  Italy 
is  due  to  the  fact  that  Madame  Varesi  lost  her 
voice  in  a  severe  illness  and,  with  the  idea  of 
burying  herself  as  far  as  possible  from  the  tor- 
menting scenes  of  her  former  glory,  migrated  to  a 
place  of  which  she  had  heard  vaguely  and  which 
seemed  to  have  a  sort  of  Italian  name.  This  was 
Chicago. 

There  she  managed  to  get  along  somehow  by 
teaching  singing  and,  if  there  was  not  always 
enough  to  provide  the  children  with  fit  clothes  for 
school,  there  was  fertainly  enough  for  an  occa- 
sional reception  and  salon  when  such  peers  as 
Melba  passed  by  and  revived  Madame  Varesi's 
memories. 

Gilda,  the  ugly  duckling  of  the  family,  was  a 
considerable  trial  to  her  mother  because  she  in- 
sisted on  going  on  the  stage.  Madame  Varesi 
knew  what  heartaches  it  could  involve,  and  besides 
it  is  just  possible  that  she  doubted  inwardly 
whether  the  aspirant  could  make  such  a  mark  in 
the  theater  as  would  be  expected — by  her — of  a 
Varesi. 

This  fear  was  only  confirmed  at  the  meeting  she 
finally  consented  to  arrange  between  her  daughter 
and  the  great  Modjeska,  who  in  her  declining 


34  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

years  (she  must  have  been  nearly  seventy  thenj 
was  still  touring  successfully  and  inexpensively  in 
classical  repertoire.  For  this  meeting  the  young- 
est of  the  Varesis  had  prepared  herself  by  learning 
the  speeches  of  Desdet?iona  and  shouting  them 
out  in  the  woods  to  the  considerable  agitation  of 
the  local  fauna. 

The  meeting  was  tense,  the  famous  star  listen- 
ing majestically  while  the  neophyte  poured  out  a 
cataract  of  Venetian  woe.  The  decision,  when 
finally  given,  was  impromptu,  but  fraught  with 
significance. 

"Gilda  will  be  an  emotional  actress,"  she  said. 
(At  this  point  Madame  Varesi  dissolved  in  tears 
because  emotional  actresses  suffer  so.)  "But,"  she 
went  on  bitterly,  "she  will  not  be  a  success.  She 
is  thin,  homely,  and  an  artist.  On  all  three  counts, 
they  will  not  want  her  in  the  American  theater." 

Then  followed  the  promise  of  a  place  in 
Modjeska's  company,  after  a  brief  practice  en- 
gagement with  the  Ben  Greet  players,  with  whom 
she  played  everything  from  Jessica  in  "The  Mer- 
chant" and  Maria  in  "Twelfth  Night"  to  the  mob 
in  "Julius  Caesar,"  playing  the  mob  with  such 
transalpine  ardor  that  Mark  Antony  made  a  for- 
mal complaint  against  the  mob's  sitting  on  poor 
Casar's  corpse. 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  35 

Meanwhile,  Madame  Varesi  herself  tried  to 
instil  a  few  principles.  There  is  something  deeply 
pathetic  in  the  picture  of  the  exiled  prima  donna, 
now  old  and  stout,  enlivening  those  Chicago 
lodgings  with  an  effort  to  reproduce  for  her  wide- 
eyed  daughter  the  gesture  and  passion  of  some 
forgotten  triumph  in  far-off  Covent  Garden. 

The  first  season  with  Modjeska — it  was  Mod- 
jeska's  last  season  on  the  stage — was  eventful. 
Once  the  star  fell  and  broke  her  arm  and  the 
management  made  a  thrifty  effort  to  keep  the 
tour  going  with  the  novice  in  the  role  of  Lady 
Macbeth.  The  novice  did  so  well  that  Modjeska 
promptly  installed  her  as  Elizabeth  in  "Mary 
Stuart" — the  German  Schiller's  tragedy  given 
with  an  Italian  and  Polish  actress,  each  playing 
in  English  with  an  accent  that  could  be  heard  for 
miles.  Yet  it  must  have  been  worth  seeing,  at 
that. 

It  was  fresh  from  such  experiences  that  Gilda 
Varesi  went  to  Mrs.  Fiske  for  "Salvation  Nell" 
and,  in  two  seasons,  learned  more  from  her  than 
most  players  learn  anywhere. 

There  followed  many  minor  roles,  and  ever  and 
always  the  dailies  and  weeklies  of  England  and 
America  gave  a  word  or  so  of  critical  enthusiasm 
for  Varesi — for  her  fine  work  both  here  and  abroad 


36  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

as  the  old  opera  singer  in  "Romance,"  for  her 
astonishing  performance  as  the  mad  woman  in 
"Children  of  Earth,"  for  her  unforgettable  rage 
as  the  blind  creature  in  the  dungeon  scene  of 
"The  Jest."  Oh,  there  were  plenty  of  plaudits. 
But  always  her  roles  were  minor  roles.  Secretly, 
Madame  Varesi  out  in  Chicago  must  have  felt 
that  the  mere  plaudits  were  not  enough  for  one 
whose  great-grandmother  had  been  the  adored 
Luigia  Boccabadotti  at  the  opera  in  Rome  when 
Napoleon  was  lord  of  Europe,  whose  grandfather 
had  been  the  Felice  Varesi  for  whom  "Rigoletto" 
was  written,  and  whose  mother  had  had  more  than 
a  little  hour  of  triumph  in  the  great  capitals  back 
home. 

Then,  into  the  producing  field  in  New  York 
came  a  new  manager,  Brock  Pemberton,  who  de- 
cided to  make  his  debut  with  this  comedy,  "Enter 
Madame,"  which,  in  desperation,  Varesi  had 
written  for  herself  in  collaboration  with  Mrs. 
Donn  Byrne.  The  play  had  been  kicking  around 
the  managers'  offices  for  many  months  without 
any  of  them  reaching  the  point  of  willingness  to 
produce  it. 

Attendant  upon  its  first  performance  were  all 
the  circumstances  which  the  wiseacres  of  Broad- 
way  regard   as  certain   forerunners  of   failure. 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  37 

Here  was  a  new  and  inexperienced  producer. 
They  always  fail,  said  Broadway.  Then  he  had 
been  obliged  to  content  himself  with  the  Garrick, 
a  theater  so  far  outside  the  familiar  belt  that  the 
wiseacres  said  no  one  would  go  near  it.  The  play 
opened  without  the  advantage  of  an  out-of-town 
try-out  on  a  night  so  torrid  that  existence  in  New 
York  was  no  more  than  barely  endurable.  At 
eight  o'clock,  just  at  the  hour  calculated  to  dis- 
courage all  theater-goers,  the  heavens  opened  and 
sluiced  the  city.  The  leading  man  had  entered  the 
rehearsals  so  late  that  his  knowledge  of  the  text 
was  maddeningly  vague  and  he  had  to  be  prompt- 
ed throughout  an  agonizing  evening. 

Yet  "Enter  Madame"  succeeded.  From  the 
first  night,  its  theater  did  not  know  a  vacant  seat 
in  twenty-six  weeks.  Within  a  few  weeks  many 
more  central  playhouses  were  ogling  it  and  offer- 
ing blandishments.  Ticket  agencies  were  agree- 
ing to  buy  all  its  orchestra  seats  for  six  weeks  in 
advance.  London  theaters  were  cabling  invita- 
tions to  visit  Piccadilly  and  the  Strand.  It  was 
an  immense  success. 

And  the  shadow?  Well,  "Enter  Madame" 
was  produced  in  mid-August.  Madame  Varesi 
had  died  in  June. 

The  casual  mention  of  how  Varesi  came  to  play 


38  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

Lady  Macbeth  before  she  was  twenty-one  is  a 
reminder  that  whereas  no  managers  ever  cast  her 
for  important  roles,  chance  did  occasionally.  Or 
was  it  chance*? 

Usually  the  lot  of  an  understudy  in  the  Ameri- 
can theater,  is  a  cheerless  one.  There  is  a  strong 
tradition  which  forces  the  sickest  actor  upon  the 
stage  when  the  voice  of  the  call-boy  is  heard.  It 
is  only  in  fiction  that  an  understudy  steps  into  a 
role  at  the  last  minute  and  awakes  next  morning 
to  iind  himself  in  capital  letters. 

Yet,  somehow,  Varesi  did  pretty  well.  The 
giving  of  any  other  player's  role  to  her  to  study  in 
case  of  an  emergency  has  had  a  singularly  debili- 
tating effect  on  the  actress  thus  doomed  to  be  de- 
placed.  Not  Modjeska  alone  but  all  the  others 
have  given  way  under  the  strain.  Thus  Doris 
Keane  in  London,  when  "Romance"  was  enjoying 
its  interminable  war-time  run  there,  lived  to  ex- 
perience the  sensation  of  reading  in  her  own  sick- 
bed the  glowing  English  criticisms  of  her  under- 
study's performance  in  the  leading  role  of  that 
Sheldon  triumph. 

Only  Mrs.  Fiske  resisted  to  the  last,  but  when, 
in  "Salvation  Nell,"  she  had  to  go  through  her 
part  with  this  flaming  Italian  woman  standing  in 


BEHIND  THE  SCENES  39 

the  wings,  all  made  up  to  go  on  as  Nell  if  need  be, 
and  fairly  radiating  the  will  to  play,  even  she  tot- 
tered. She  felt  within  her  a  stronger  impulse  to 
go  on  sick-report  than  she  had  known  in  all  her 
days  on  the  stage.  Hastily  she  arranged  for 
Varesi  to  understudy  another  part.  "May  it  be 
that  of  the  harlot*?"  asked  the  aspirant  wistfully. 
Mrs.  Fiske  smiled  maternally.  "With  your  fig- 
ure, my  dear?"  she  replied,  and  bade  the  young 
hopeful  make  ready  to  substitute  in  case  anything 
should  befall  the  gaunt  woman  playing  Halle- 
lujah Mary.  A  few  days  later  Hallelujah  Mary 
broke  an  obliging  rib.  Small  wonder  then  that,  in 
so  superstitious  a  world  as  the  theater,  word  soon 
spread  that  Varesi  had  brought  over  from  Italy 
the  power  of  the  evil  eye — a  rumor  which  gained 
considerable  credence  once  upon  a  time  when,  in 
the  middle  of  a  sensationally  successful  run,  a 
great  star  announced  the  intention  of  departing 
for  other  climes  on  a  matter  of  private  business. 
The  management  immediately  put  Varesi  into 
rehearsal  as  a  substitute.  She  was  in  the  midst  of 
elated  preparation  for  the  role,  which,  after  the 
succession  of  old  peasant  parts,  would  suffer  her 
to  speak  at  last  without  an  accent  and  to  reveal 
what  beauty  of  body  was  hers.    In  the  midst  of 


40  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

all  this,  the  star  suddenly  decided  not  to  quit. 
They  say  Varesi  went  calmly  to  the  great  one's 
dressing-room,  looked  the  offender  over  from  head 
to  toe,  and  said  in  a  voice  of  doom  (no  matter 
how  much  she  may  have  been  smiling  inwardly), 
*T  was  promised  this  part,  and  if  I  do  not  get  the 
chance  to  play  it  I  will  poison  you." 

Whereat  there  were  gales  of  laughter  up  and 
down  Broadway — laughter  suddenly  and  nerv- 
ously stilled  when,  a  fortnight  later,  the  star  was 
borne  away  for  a  week  of  serious  illness.  The  doc- 
tors seemed  to  think  it  was  influenza.  Maybe  it 
was.  The  star  was  John  Barrymore.  The  play 
was  "The  Jest."  Varesi  had  sustained  her  repu- 
tation as  the  most  destructive  understudy  in  the 
American  Theater. 

But  that  was  in  the  days  of  struggle.  Since 
then  Varesi  has  starred  in  New  York  and  Chicago 
and  London  and  her  glowering  days  are  over. 


II 

THE  KNOCK  AT  THE  STAGE-DOOR 

I 

"Born  of  Strolling  Players" 

ALL  about  us  in  the  theater  to-day  are  the 
players  who  will  be  the  Mrs.  Fiskes,  the 
Julia  Marlowes,  the  Laurette  Taylors  of  to-mor- 
row— the  young  fry  of  the  stage  whose  names  will 
be  big  and  black  in  the  playbills  of  1935  and 
1940.  Of  these  youngsters,  none  is  lovelier,  none 
has  a  richer  or  more  glowing  talent,  none  seems 
more  surely  possessed  of  a  little  of  an  ancient 
magic  than  the  one  named  Margalo  Gillmore,  a 
fair-haired,  sunlit  girl  who,  unheralded  and  de- 
cently abashed,  emerged  out  of  obscurity  in  our ' 
theater  a  few  seasons  ago.  When,  among  the  first 
of  her  adventures,  she  caught  all  our  eyes  as  the 
daughter  of  the  famous  Mrs.  Fair^  those  of  us  who 

\  41 


42  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

had  seen  the  John  Drew  plays  of  the  early  nineties 
experienced  a  little  twinge  of  recollection,  recall- 
ing the  gangling  and  stringy  but  marvelously 
sweet  girl  who,  just  as  shy  and  just  as  awkward, 
ventured  forth  then  under  the  shelter  of  a  cele- 
brated uncle.  Now  we  nodded  our  heads  and 
whispered  one  to  another,  "She  is  like  a  new  Ethel 
Barrymore." 

But  what  few  of  us  knew  (though  all  of  us 
might  have  guessed)  was  that  she  was  like  Ethel 
Barrymore  in  another  respect.  She  was  like  Ethel 
Barrymore  in  respect  to  her  grandmother.  They 
are  both  children  of  the  theater,  each,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  born  in  the  fourth  generation  of  a  cele- 
brated theatrical  family.  As  Ethel  Barrymore  is 
the  granddaughter  of  the  famous  Mrs.  John 
Drew,  so  Margalo  Gillmore  is  the  granddaughter 
of  the  famous  Emily  Thorne,  who  was  a  favorite 
in  London  in  the  eighties.  We  might,  I  say,  have 
guessed  as  much.  Indeed,  after  watching  the  exits 
and  the  entrances  of  a  dozen  seasons  in  New 
York,  one  is  minded,  when  the  young  pretenders 
write  down  from  Poughkeepsie  and  Northampton 
explaining  that  they  will  be  free  for  all  sorts  of 
careers  in  June  and  asking  how  to  go  on  the  stage 
• — one  is  minded,  then,  to  answer  in  this  wise: 


THE  KNOCK  AT  THE  STAGE-DOOR    43 

My  dear  young  lady, 

There  are  many  ways  in  which  you  might  prepare 
yourself  for  the  theater,  but  one  thing  is  essential.  You 
may  do  as  you  think  best  about  selecting  an  experienced 
actress  for  your  teacher  but  you  must  select  an  experi- 
enced actress  for  your  grandmother. 

Such  a  reply  might  be  dispiriting  in  its  effect, 
but  there  is  wisdom  in  it.  It  says  something  about 
the  theater  that  is  true  and  significant — something 
which,  twenty-five  or  fifty  years  ago,  would  have 
gone  without  saying,  for  the  theater  then  was 
still  thought  of  as  a  world  apart,  a  strange  place 
where  a  black  art  was  practised  by  a  Gipsy  folk, 
bred  to  it,  doubtless  through  generations,  though 
of  course  one  did  not  pretend  to  know  enough 
about  such  people  to  say  with  any  certainty. 

Even  to  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  this 
notion  of  the  theater  as  a  world  apart  persisted. 
It  may  be  a  long  while  ago  that  the  laws  of 
England  classified  actors  along  with  rogues  and 
vagabonds  and  the  churches  there  forebade  them 
burial  in  consecrated  ground.  It  may  be  a  long 
while  ago  that  the  first  actresses  to  venture  before 
an  English  audience — French  hussies,  they  were 
— were  hooted  and  pelted  and  generally  treated 
in  a  manner  so  discouraging  that  it  was  clear,  ac- 
cording to  the  delighted  Puritan  diarists  of  the 


44  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

day,  that  so  unfeminine  and  offensive  an  exploit 
would  never  be  repeated. 

But  it  is  not  so  very  long  ago  that  the  Church 
of  the  Transfiguration  in  New  York  earned  its 
cozy  and  hospitable  name  of  the  Little  Church 
Around  the  Corner  when  it  opened  its  doors  to  the 
burial  service  of  an  actor  after  a  more  haughty 
House  of  God  on  near-by  Fifth  Avenue  had  de- 
clined the  opportunity.  And  it  is  not  so  very  long 
ago  that  many  of  the  more  righteous  among  our 
preachers,  when  busy  in  exorcising  the  evil  spirits 
from  their  communities,  were  rather  given  to  using 
the  word  "actress"  and  the  word  "harlot"  as 
interchangeable  terms — both  opprobrious. 

It  is  only  recently  that  this  attitude  (still  vis- 
ible enough,  of  course,  in  some  quarters)  has  be- 
gun to  take  on  a  slightly  archeological  aspect. 
Indeed,  the  pendulum  has  moved  far  in  the  last 
twenty-five  years — swinging  from  the  day  when 
it  was  assumed  that  no  decent  woman  would  ap- 
pear on  the  stage  to  the  vague  liberalism  of  the 
present  day,  when  it  is  apparently  assumed  that 
any  decent  woman  can.  In  such  a  day,  it  is  worth 
while  pointing  out  that  there  is  no  art  in  which 
the  force  of  heredity  seems  to  play  so  controlling 
a  part.    To  the  young  pretenders  (by  way  of  giv- 


THE  KNOCK  AT  THE  STAGE-DOOR    45 

ing  them  pause,  perhaps,  or  at  least  of  instilling 
in  them  a  little  decent  humility  toward  the  house 
at  whose  doors  they  are  knocking)  it  is  worth 
while  pointing  out  that  the  theater  has  an  aris- 
tocracy older  and  more  deeply  rooted  than  that 
which  any  other  activity  in  American  life  can 
boast.  The  banker  or  the  woolen  merchant 
or  the  pedagogue  who  can  say  that  his  father  and 
grandfather  were  bankers  or  woolen  merchants 
or  pedagogues  before  him,  feels  so  great  a  strength 
and  continuity  in  the  fabric  of  that  life  that  he 
fairly  glistens  with  pride  and  a  sense  of  well- 
being  and  security.  But  compared  with  the  fore- 
most actors  of  our  stage,  these  tradesmen  and 
philosophers  are  the  merest  parvenus. 

Of  this  impression  that  the  talents  of  the  thea- 
ter are  husbanded  through  the  years,  handed  down 
from  father  to  son,  from  mother  to  daughter,  the 
annals  of  the  American  stage  furnish  repeated 
reminders  and  reinforcements.  Such  reminders 
come  at  odd  times  and  in  odd  ways.  Go  into  the 
Players'  Club,  standing  there  on  the  south  side  of 
Gramercy  Park,  smoky,  unpretentious,  and  (for 
New  York)  quite  thick  with  memories.  There 
they  will  point  out  to  you  with  a  certain  unfath- 
omable satisfaction  that  the  club,  in  all  its  years. 


46  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

has  had  but  three  presidents.  The  names  of  the 
three  are  written  on  the  walls — Edwin  Booth, 
Joseph  Jefferson,  John  Drew.  But  what  they  do 
not  point  out,  probably  because  they  think  of  it 
as  a  matter  of  course,  is  that  each  of  these  men,  in 
his  fleeting  eminence,  was  no  nouveau  riche  of  the 
theater  but  one  born  in  its  purple,  one  trained 
to  its  speech  from  the  cradle,  one  bred  of  show 
folks. 

The  name  of  Booth  has  been  in  our  playbills 
for  more  than  a  century.  It  is  still  there.  The 
Jeffersons  were  of  even  older  lineage,  and  time 
was  when  a  performance  of  "The  Rivals"  was 
managed  in  this  country  with  every  role  played 
by  one  or  another  of  the  Jefferson  clan.  And 
Drew,  of  course,  stands  midway,  the  grandson  of 
a  popular  English  actor,  the  son  of  a  superb 
comedienne,  the  uncle  of  the  three  Barrymores. 

I  watched  his  enigmatic  smile  off  and  on 
through  that  uncomfortable  evening  when  two  of 
these  children  of  his  sister  were  lending  their 
potent  name  to  a  spurious  play  called  "Clair  de 
Lune,"  a  sleazy  and  pompous  dramatization  of 
Hugo's  "L'Homme  Qui  Rit."  It  worked  itself  up 
by  easy  stages  to  one  scabrous  scene  wherein  a 
degenerate  duchess  made  hot  love  to  the  hideous 


THE  KNOCK  AT  THE  STAGE-DOOR    47 

cripple  with  the  mangled  face,  the  part  played,  of 
course,  by  John  Barrymore.  That  role  of  the 
duchess  seemed  the  most  tempting  in  all  the  list  of 
characters,  and  at  first  one  wondered  a  little  why 
Ethel  Barrymore  had  passed  it  by  and  taken  for 
herself  the  less  palpitant  part  of  the  queen.  But, 
after  the  love  scene,  the  reason  was  clear  enough. 
"Ethel  could  hardly  have  played  the  duchess," 
said  another  actress,  acidly.  "It  would  have  been 
adding  incest  to  injury."  However,  that  is  a 
digression. 

Consider,  instead,  who  did  play  the  duchess. 
The  part  fell,  by  this  default,  to  the  slender,  deft, 
uncanny  hands  of  Violet  Kemble-Cooper.  Now, 
if  it  be  true  than  on  our  great  occasions  the  spirits 
of  our  forebears  gather  round  us,  to  brood  over  us, 
to  wish  us  well,  and  to  watch  what,  of  all  they 
knew  and  handed  on,  we  have  remembered  and 
kept  bright — if  that  legend  be  true,  what  a  throng 
of  ghosts  must  have  hovered  in  the  wings  at  the 
Empire  that  night.  For  playing  opposite  to  heir- 
apparent  of  the  Drew-Barrymore  tradition  was  a 
young  actress  of  an  even  more  illustrious  inheri- 
tance. Maurice  Barrymore  was  there  in  the  wings, 
of  course — the  handsome  Barry  who  fluttered  a 
thousand  hearts  in  the  days  of  the  bustle  and  the 


48  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

redowa  and  the  phaeton.  And,  of  course,  there 
was  old  Mrs.  Drew,  pounding  her  disapproval,  I 
should  think,  with  the  now  inaudible  cane  of  Mrs. 
Malaprop.  But  there,  too,  was  Fanny  Kemble 
and  John  Philip  Kemble  and  a  score  of  other 
memories  of  Drury  Lane  and  Covent  Garden, 
awake  in  those  wings  because  two  heirs  of  theirs 
were  out  on  the  stage  before  an  audience  playing 
a  love  scene. 

In  writing  of  heredity,  the  word  "environment" 
pops  up  as  quickly  and  as  inevitably  as  does  the 
far  end  of  a  seesaw  when,  with  firmness  and  con- 
viction, you  but  plant  yourself  on  the  other.  It  is 
difficult  always  to  say  of  any  player  that  he  was 
born  with  his  talent,  since,  just  because  he  was 
born  in  the  theater,  he  wandered  early  upon  the 
stage  and  so  was  bent  and  shaped  to  its  needs 
while  he  was  young.  One  does  not  have  to  be  a 
profound  student  of  the  stage  to  see  the  tremen- 
dous advantage  that  is  held  on  it  by  those  who 
begin  their  work  there  so  early  in  life  that  they 
are  as  unaware  of  it  as  of  the  air  they  breathe  and 
of  the  sun  that  warms  us  all.  They  are  growing 
up  in  the  theater  in  the  precious  years  when  the 
rest  of  us  are  outside,  not  only  not  learning  how 
to  act,  but,  by  every  experience  and  precept  and 


THE  KNOCK  AT  THE  STAGE-DOOR    49 

taboo  of  the  breakfast  table  and  the  sidewalk  and 
the  schoolyard,  are  busily  learning  not  to  act  at 
all. 

Consider  for  a  moment  the  most  beautiful  art 
which  the  theater  of  our  time  has  known — the  in- 
comparable art  of  Eleanora  Duse.  Her  biographi- 
cal note  in  "Who's  Who  in  the  Theatre"  starts  off 
with  the  single,  significant  line:  "Bom  of  stroll- 
ing players."  Are  we  to  find  the  explanation  of 
her  art  in  that  fact?  Or  is  there  no  need  to  go 
back  of  the  mere  fact  that  she  went  on  the  stage 
as  a  baby — so  young  that  by  the  time  she  was 
seven  she  was  experienced  enough  to  take  over  the 
post  of  prompter  and  by  the  time  she  was  sixteen 
she  had  had  enough  training  to  play  the  foremost 
roles,  enough,  at  least,  to  play  Juliet  in  a  produc- 
tion at  Verona.  Sixteen  and  playing  Juliet  at 
Verona  I  The  next  Vassar  girl  who  writes  down 
in  April  to  Mr.  Belasco  that  every  one  is  so  good 
as  to  call  her  pretty  and  that  they  did  all  admit 
she  was  perfectly  splendid  as  Tiveenie  in  "The 
Admirable  Crichton"  at  Prom  time  and  that  she  is 
only  twenty-one  and  please  would  he  take  her 
under  his  instruction  and  make  a  star  of  her  come 
day — such  a  one  might  well  receive  back  from 
him  just  a  little  engraved  card  with  this  legend 


50  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

on  it:  "When  she  was  sixteen,  Duse  played 
Juliet  at  Veronal" 

That  biographical  note  of  hers,  so  rare  in  its 
bluntness  among  the  more  pretentious  para- 
graphs which  are  carefully  and  sometimes  crypti- 
cally edited  to  adorn  such  records,  might,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  be  written  after  most  of  our  best 
names  in  the  theater.  Minnie  Maddern  Fiske, 
E.  H.  Sothern,  Maude  Adams — born  of  showfolks 
all  and  born  while  those  folks  were  on  tour.  That 
was  why  it  was  possible  for  Maude  Adams  to 
make  her  first  appearance  on  the  stage  at  the  age 
of  nine  months — her  first  entrance  was  on  a 
platter — and  why,  when  little  Minnie  Maddern 
made  her  New  York  debut  at  the  age  of  four,  it 
was  as  an  actress  who,  though  the  advertisements 
at  the  time  mendaciously  announced  it  as  her  first 
appearance  on  any  stage,  had  already  played  a 
dozen  roles  in  as  many  towns  and  simply  reeked 
of  experience. 

And  lest  it  should  seem  from  this  review  of  the 
generations  in  respect  to  our  players  that  it  is  only 
among  them  that  this  inheritance  is  marked,  it 
should  be  noted  that  the  same  tradition  can  be 
observed  at  work  among  the  others  arts  of  the 
theater.     It  is,  therefore,  worth  mentioning  par- 


THE  KNOCK  AT  THE  STAGE-DOOR    51 

enthetically  that  the  two  best  plays  written  by 
Americans  in  our  time — "The  First  Year"  and 
some  one  of  Eugene  O'Neill's — were  the  work  of 
playwrights  born  of  showfolks,  the  work  of 
children  of  the  theater  born  on  tour.  And  for 
those  enthusiasts  in  matters  of  decoration,  who 
seem  to  feel  that  the  actors  and  the  playwrights 
are  but  negligible  and  rather  annoying  func- 
tionaries and  that  the  true  man  of  the  theater  is  he 
who  dreams  its  scenes  and  brings  them  into  being 
m  a  new  beauty  of  line  and  light  and  color,  it 
must  be  noted  that  their  leader,  too,  was  born  on 
tour.  This  Edward  Gordon  Craig,  before  whom 
even  George  Jean  Nathan  crosses  himself  in  pub- 
lic and  who  was  for  so  long  a  mere  voice  crying  in 
the  wilderness,  not  only  had  an  actress  for  a 
daughter  but  an  actress  for  a  grandmother.  It 
was  out  of  the  orthodox  theater  of  canvas  palaces, 
flat  flights  of  stairs,  and  no  end  of  grand  draperies 
that  Craig  went  out  to  preach  the  new  gospel.  His 
mother,  by  the  way,  has  also  been  a  good  actress. 
Her  name  is  Ellen  Terry. 

There  is  a  story  in  some  old  showman's  memoirs 
of  a  visit  paid  back-stage  in  the  late  sixties,  when 
Tom  Davey  and  Lizzie  Maddern  managed  the 
stock  company  out  in  Columbus.    The  visitor  was 


52  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

all  for  a  little  idle  gossip  and  sat  down  for  his 
comfort  on  the  nearest  costume-hamper  which 
had  been  pushed  against  the  dressing-room  wall. 
Whereat  Davey  roared  with  alarm  and  dragged 
him  off  exclaiming:  "Here,  don't  sit  there  or 
you  '11  be  smothering  America's  future  tragedi- 
enne before  she  has  had  a  chance."  And  he  lifted 
the  cover  far  enough  to  show  that  that  basket  was 
serving  as  temporary  cradle  for  a  red-headed  baby 
named  Marie  Augusta  Davey,  who  was  destined, 
in  time,  to  get  out  of  the  basket  and,  after  a  nec- 
essary and  proper  interval,  to  become  Mrs.  Fiske. 

Such  tales  as  that  one  have  in  them  the  tingle 
of  the  eternal  renewal  of  the  theater,  the  same 
tingle  I  felt  one  hot  night  in  the  summer  of  1916 
when  I  was  watching  some  children  in  a  settle- 
ment house  on  Avenue  B,  New  York,  perform 
with  tremendous  gravity  the  "Sherwood  Forest" 
of  Alfred  Noyes.  The  boy  who  played  Robin 
Hood  was  a  striking,  swarthy,  unexpectedly  deep- 
voiced  youngster  who  was  later  snuffed  out  in  the 
war.  The  sight  of  his  name  in  the  program  had 
a  little  thrill  in  it  for  those  of  us  who  were  out 
front.     It  was  Richard  Mansfield,  2nd. 

So,  when,  from  time  to  time,  I  hear  a  mighty 
sighing  in  the  land  over  the  fact  that  we  have  no 


i 


THE  KNOCK  AT  THE  STAGE-DOOR    53 

great  players  any  more,  I  manage  to  bear  up  be- 
cause of  my  own  suspicion  that  the  next  Ada 
Rehan  is  asleep  to-night  in  a  costume-hamper  in 
some  obscure  theater.  And  I  think  that,  after  all, 
we  might  better  write  to  that  girl  in  Poughkeepsie 
something  in  this  wise : 

My  dear  child : 

Come  if  you  must.  You  will  find  your  way  in  the 
theater  full  of  the  most  heart-breaking  discouragements 
and,  even  if  you  are  not  to  be  driven  out  of  it,  it  is  prob- 
able that  the  great  roles  will  never  come  your  way.  But 
you  will  have  a  daughter  some  day  and  the  way  will  be 
easier  for  her.  As  for  your  granddaughter — why,  she 
may  play  Juliet  in  Verona. 


2 

The  Swarming  Amateurs 

Amateur  activity  in  dramatic  work  has  in  the 
last  ten  or  fifteen  years  increased  to  a  most  aston- 
ishing degree.  The  American  theater,  still  di- 
rected however  helplessly  from  New  York,  ha^ 
fallen  ludicrously  behind  in  its  task  of  keeping 
apace  with  the  expansion  of  the  country  and,  from 
many  a  thriving  community,  has  retreated  alto- 
gether, leaving  the  citizens  to  darkness  and  the 


54  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

movies.  In  such  places,  amateur  societies  of  stag- 
gering ambitiousness  have  sprung  up  to  satisfy  an 
ancient  and,  for  all  the  Puritan  hostility,  an  in- 
eradicable appetite. 

There  has  been  an  entirely  new  interest  in  stage 
decoration,  so  that  one  can  mention  cycloramas 
and  amber  spots  without  causing  bewilderment. 
There  has  been  a  great  reading  and  conning  of 
new  plays.  Publishers  who,  in  1910,  would  have 
fainted  at  the  mere  suggestion  that  they  publish  a 
play  have  since  taken  to  putting  out  contemporary 
dramatic  literature  in  abundance.  The  works  of 
Eugene  O'Neill,  for  instance,  few  of  which  have 
found  the  professional  stages  outside  New  York, 
have,  in  book  form,  penetrated  to  the  remotest 
nooks  of  America,  and  his  name,  probably,  has 
more  meaning  in  its  generation — conveys  more, 
that  is,  to  more  people — than  the  incomparably 
more  successful  Clyde  Fitch's  did  in  his. 

It  is  the  same  with  the  aspiring  Susan  Glaspell. 
Her  plays  have  had  only  brief  and  experimental 
production  in  New  York,  but  they  have  been  pub- 
lished, and  the  amateurs  from  Savannah  to  Se- 
attle have  reveled  in  them.  She  herself  could  not 
come  anywhere  near  telling  how  many  perform- 
ances have  been  given  in  America  of  "Suppressed 


THE  KNOCK  AT  THE  STAGE-DOOR     ^^- 

Desires"  and  "Trifles,"  for  most  often,  probably, 
no  report  of  such  performance  is  made  either  to 
her  or  to  her  publisher.  The  old  aversion  to  pay- 
ing royalties  is  still  strong  among  the  amateurs. 
Fairly  reputable  characters  in  the  community — 
the  banker,  the  pastor,  and  all — have  not  yet 
learned  to  blush  at  picking  a  playwright's  pocket. 

I  suppose  "Suppressed  Desires"  has  been  played 
oftener  in  America  than  any  other  one-act  play. 
I  once  saw  it  creditably  given  by  a  college  dra- 
matic club  at  commencement  time  before  an 
alumni  audience.  The  performance  was  amusing 
to  watch  but  not  so  amusing  as  the  audience. 
That  audience,  drawn  from  every  State  in  the 
Union,  followed  the  players  with  a  reminiscent 
glint  in  the  eye  and  with  moving  lips.  They  were 
all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men  and  women — 
architects,  insurance  agents,  teachers,  and  the 
like.  Indeed,  I  think  they  had  only  three  things 
in  common.  They  all  derived  directly  or  indi- 
rectly from  this  college,  they  all  believed  in  the 
sanctity  of  private  property,  and  they  all,  at  one 
time  or  another,  had  played  in  "Suppressed 
Desires." 

It  is  from  such  clubs,  in  and  out  of  the  schools 
and  colleges,  that  there  have  sprung  the  number 


I 


56  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

of  young  men  and  women  who  think  of  New 
York  chiefly  as  the  city  where  one  can  go  and 
sort  of  loiter  around  the  stage-door  of  the  Belasco 
Theater  in  the  chance  that  the  Wizard,  on  his 
way  out  to  luncheon  (hatless  and  clad,  of  course, 
in  a  gray-green  artist's  smock),  will  see  one,  be 
struck  instantly  by  one's  dramatic  talent,  and  en- 
gage one  forthwith  for  his  next  production. 

By  definition,  an  amateur  is  one  who  does  a 
thing  for  the  love  of  it,  but,  naturally  enough 
and  pardonably,  the  people  of  the  theater  are 
wont  to  speak  of  an  amateur  as  one  who  does 
everything  incompetently.  They  forget  that  there 
are  many  players  in  the  Amateur  Comedy  Club  of 
New  York  who  have  played  more  roles  in  the  last 
fifteen  years  than  most  of  their  little  brothers  of 
the  real  pear-tree  garden.  And  that  some  of  their 
productions  are  immeasurably  superior  in  every 
way  to  the  productions  of  the  same  pieces  made 
outside  on  Broadway.  They  forget  that  the 
Washington  Square  Players,  a  group  of  quasi- 
amateurs,  constituted  the  cocoon  from  which,  after 
several  years'  hatching,  emerged  the  Theater 
Guild — which  was,  in  two  or  three  seasons,  to  be 
recognized  as  the  most  important  theater  in  the 
English-speaking  world. 


THE  KNOCK  AT  THE  STAGE-DOOR    57 

But  the  Washington  Square  Players  were  not 
entirely  amateur,  and  the  Amateur  Comedy  Club 
is  a  dazzling  exception.  All  in  all,  the  attitude  of 
the  professional  players  toward  the  amateurs  is 
best  summed  up  in  a  raffish  story  they  delight  in 
telling  on  all  occasions.  It  begins  with  a  touching 
picture  of  an  old  broken-down  tragedian  sharing 
a  park  bench  with  a  bedraggled  and  unappetizing 
street-walker.  "Ah,  Madame,"  says  the  trage- 
dian, "quelle  Ironie!  The  two  oldest  professions 
in  the  world — ruined  by  amateurs." 


3 

Dr.  Gundelfinger 

It  is  not,  however,  the  amateur  actor  who  af- 
flicts the  theater.  The  amateur  at  whose  activity 
the  theater  manifests  all  the  symptoms  of  chills 
and -fever  is  the  amateur  playwright.  And  this, 
I  think,  is  true,  that  men  who  would  never  think 
of  attempting  a  novel  or  an  ode  or  even  a  book  of 
essays  are  not  one  whit  abashed  at  the  prospect  of 
writing  a  four-act  problem  play. 

The  number  of  these  unheard  dramatic  authors 
would  exceed  your  most  extravagant  estimates. 


58  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

A  house-to-house  search  of  the  bureau  drawers  of 
Manhattan's  hall  bedrooms  would,  I  am  sure, 
yield  up  a  hundred  thousand  disembodied  manu- 
scripts. The  most  unexpected  persons  carry  plays 
concealed  about  their  persons.  One  indignant  old 
English  dramatist  swears  that,  once  upon  a  time 
when  he  was  ill,  the  surgeon  called  to  his  bedside 
told  him  he  had  only  two  hours  to  live  and  said 
that  there  would  be  just  time  for  him  to  read  a 
little  comedy  which  he,  the  surgeon,  had  dashed 
off  some  time  before.  The  fairly  reliable  Chan- 
ning  Pollock  swears  that  a  man  once  brought  to 
his  New  York  office  the  manuscript  of  a  five-act 
melodrama  which  he  had  tenderly  carried  down 
from  his  home  in  Rochester.  While  evasively 
agreeing  to  read  and  pass  judgment  on  this  work, 
Pollock  asked  the  author  why  he  had  not  been 
content  to  send  it  down  by  registered  mail.  "Oh, 
well,"  was  the  reply,  "it  was  no  bother  to  bring 
it  down.  I  come  down  every  day.  I  'm  a  conduc- 
tor on  the  New  York  Central."  I  myself,  for 
several  years,  received  at  regular  intervals  a  sce- 
nario from  one  man  who  always  offered  me  50  per 
cent,  of  the  prospective  royalties  if  I  would  get 
him  a  contract  for  his  play's  production.  These 
scenarios   varied    wildly    in   subject-matter    and 


THE  KNOCK  AT  THE  STAGE-DOOR    59 

style,  but  they  had  this  in  common — that  they 
were  all  mailed  from  the  same  place,  the  Mattea- 
wan  State  Hospital  for  the  Insane. 

Louis  N.  Parker,  the  author  of  "Rosemary" 
and  "Pomander  Walk"  and  "Disraeli,"  in  a 
privately  printed  account  of  some  of  his  more 
painful  experiences  in  the  theater,  reports  on  one 
submitted  manuscript  in  the  following  words: 

It  was  a  five-act  tragedy,  and  with  liberal  allowance 
for  intervals  for  much-needed  refreshment,  it  would 
have  played  nearly  an  hour.  The  first  act  represented 
the  utterly  dark  interior  of  a  cavern  in  the  heart  of  the 
Caucasus.  It  was,  very  superfluously,  night.  There 
was  to  be  deep  silence  during  the  first  five  minutes  after 
the  curtain  had  risen.  Then  a  voice,  proceeding  from 
an  unseen  speaker  at  the  back  of  the  cavern,  began.  And 
continued.  It  gave  us  an  agonizing  history  of  the 
speaker's  sufferings.  It  went  on  for  ten  minutes  and 
ended,  as  nearly  as  I  can  remember :  "And  must  I,  the 
last  descendant  of  the  Badenweilers,  nursed  in  all  the 
luxury  which  untold  wealth  can  lavish  on  its  favorite, 
must  I  perish  here,  deprived  of  a  loving  mother's  solici- 
tous attention,  in  squalor  and  anguish,  with  noisome 
nocturnal  fowl  for  companions?"  (He  groans.  Cur- 
tain.) 

I  think,  all  told,  that  the  most  unbelievable 
play  ever  sent  to  me  was  one  called  "The  Ice 
Lens:  a  Four-Act  Play  on  Academic  Immoral- 
ities," run  off  on  a  press  at  Sewickley,  Pennsyl- 


6o  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

vania,  and  sent  me  by  its  author,  George  Freder- 
ick Gundelfinger,  Ph.D.  I  should  like  to  quote 
enough  from  his  indignant  preface  to  illustrate  the 
extraordinary  naivete  which  is  begotten  even  in 
a  doctor  of  philosophy  the  moment  he  has  written 
a  play.  That  preface,  of  course,  dealt  at  length 
with  the  ignorance  and  prejudice  in  the  theater 
which  had  prevented  "The  Ice  Lens"  from  being 
produced.    A  few  extracts  from  it  follow : 

The  theme  of  The  Ice  Lens  was  not  created  simul- 
taneously with  the  impulse  to  develop  it.  The  raw 
material  (raw  in  more  sense  than  one)  from  which  it 
has  been  constructed  was  being  stowed  away  in  my  mind, 
although  more  or  less  unconsciously,  both  during  and 
before  my  efforts  on  the  song-comedy.  But  when  the 
idea  of  writing  a  comedy  occurred  to  me,  this  dormant 
mentality  (furnished  by  several  years'  residence  in  a 
college  community  as  undergraduate,  graduate  student, 
instructor  and  proctor  respectively)  awoke  with  amazing 
alacrity.  Hundreds  of  "little  things"  I  had  earlier  seen, 
heard  and  felt  involuntarily,  were  recalled  with  far  more 
vividness.  They  were  woven  together  into  a  play  in  a 
very  short  time — not  so  very,  very  short,  if  one  takes 
into  account  the  nights  also,  which  were,  in  general, 
sleepless.  .  .  . 

The  first  two  criticisms  I  received  had  come  from 
persons  whom  I  did  not  know  from  Adam.  I  had  not 
shown  my  copy  to  a  single  acquaintance  before  sub- 
mitting it.  It  was  not  that  I  altogether  spurned  help 
from  the  outside,  but  rather  that  I  wanted  to  work  in 
secrecy.  The  nature  of  the  play  demanded  this.  When 
you  will  have  become  a  little  more  familiar  with  it,  you 


THE  KNOCK  AT  THE  STAGE-DOOR    61 

will  understand  why  I  did  not  seek  admonition  fronn 
Sonne  English  professor  on  the  Yale  faculty.  (I  would 
probably  have  received  an  extremely  different  kind  from 
the  kind  I  was  seeking  if  I  had.)  Being  absolutely  im- 
mune from  discouragement  and  having,  in  addition,  that 
exaggerated  sense  of  individual  and  independent 
capability  which  is  characteristic  of  every  artist  who 
mtist  arrive  (even  though  he  has  got  to  come  half  way 
down  off  his  high  horse  in  order  to  do  so),  I  could  not 
immediately  agree  with  the  criticisms  I  had  received, 
although  later  I  fully  appreciated  the  fact  that  they  con- 
tained some  truth.  .  .  . 

But  before  sending  the  punctuated  copy  of  The  Ice 
Lens  to  the  press,  I  decided  to  make  one  more  appeal  to 
the  stage — this  time  not  to  a  producer  but  to  an  actress  : 
Maude  Adams.  It  occurred  to  me  that  Miss  Adams 
had  done  much  to  further  dramatic  interests  at  Yale,  and 
I  wondered  if  she  might  not  be  willing  to  help  improve 
Yale  morally  by  means  of  the  drama.  I  must  admit 
that  I  had  my  doubts  as  to  her  ability  to  fight  through 
the  role  of  Jeanette  Lyon  in  the  Third  Act,  even  though 
I  had  seen  her  play  the  part  of  a  rooster.  However,  my 
doubts  were  unnecessary,  for  Miss  Adams  not  only  never 
read  the  manuscript  but  even  ignored  the  letter  in  which 
I  had  very  politely  asked  her  if  she  would  care  to  do 
so.  .  .  . 

The  Yale  Alumni  Weekly,  by  means  of  which  the 
true  purpose  of  the  play  could  have  been  brought  before 
the  graduates,  declined  to  review  it,  to  accept  a  paid 
advertisement,  or  even  to  mention  it  under  the  author's 
name  among  the  Alumni  Notes — a  strong  and  clear  proof 
that  The  Ice  Lens  was  a  play  with  a  future.  .  .  . 

Frankly  speaking,  I  myself  was  beginning  to  discredit 
the  opinion  of  that  earlier  critic  who  said  that  my  work 
did  not  show  "the  instinct  for  plot  and  situation  which 
marks  a  born  playwright,"  although  I  shall  never  refrain 


62  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

from  admitting  that  the  original  manuscript  was  crude. 
It  is  true  that  certain  species  of  birds  build  their  nests, 
the  first  as  well  as  the  last,  with  extreme  care  and  choice 
of  material,  and  it  is  even  unexceptionally  true  that 
the  workmanship  of  all  bees  can  hardly  be  improved 
upon.  Yet  we  know  that,  in  general,  instinct  implies 
crudeness,  and  this  is  both  irrefutably  and  necessarily 
so  in  the  case  of  the  human  artist.  Would  any  intelli- 
gent person  expect  a  born  playwright's  first  product 
to  be  as  perfect  as  the  first  nest  of  a  yellow  warbler? 
It  is  not  enough  to  be  a  born  playwright;  a  playwright 
must  acquire  intellect  in  addition  to  his  innate  genius. 
Egotistic  though  it  may  seem,  I  am  going  to  claim  that 
the  original  manuscript  of  The  Ice  Lens  did  show  dra- 
matic instinct,  but  I  wish  to  add  shamefully  in  the  same 
breath  that,  despite  the  fact  that  I  had  already  acquired 
both  a  Ph.B.  and  a  Ph.D.  at  the  time,  I  had  not  acquired 
one  smattering  of  intellect.  A  thoroughly  intellectual 
person  can  refer  to  an  event  as  horrible  as  the  onslaught 
at  Chateau-Thierry  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  us  think 
of  nothing  but  an  oriole  twittering  on  an  apple  tree  in 
whose  dappled  shadow  a  country  maiden  is  powdering 
her  young  lettuce  plants  with  phosphate  of  lime.  "Fer- 
tilized with  the  rich  blood  of  the  world's  best  men,  a 
new  springtime  is  opening  on  the  world,"  said  President 
Dabney  of  the  University  of  Cincirmati  in  a  recent 
baccalaureate.  I  repeat  it,  that  however  devoid  of  this 
intellectual  element  the  situations  in  The  Ice  Lens  were, 
they  were  not  devoid  of  the  instinct  of  a  born  playwright. 
I  once  heard  Margaret  Anglin  in  Zira,  and  to  this  day 
when  I  read  the  lines  of  Jeanette  Lyon  in  the  Third  Act 
of  my  play,  I  experience  the  same  emotion  by  means  of 
which  Miss  Anglin  almost  lifted  me  out  of  my  seat.  In- 
cidentally, I  have  yet  to  hear  the  college  president  who 
can  lift  me  out  of  my  seat,  although  at  a  recent  com- 
mencement in  Soldiers'  Memorial,  Pittsburgh,  Pa.,  I  was 


THE  KNOCK  AT  THE  STAGE-DOOR    63 

almost  knocked  out  of  my  seat  by  a  certain  LL.D.  (plus 
a  D.D.)  as  he  went  leaping  about  the  stage  not  unlike  a 
mad  dachshund  yelping:  "Grod  damn  the  German  gov- 
ernment!" Would  that  he  had  first  gone  to  Miss  Anglin 
to  get  a  few  pointers  on  how  to  move  one's  audience  in  a 
less  literal  sense !  I  have  often  thought  of  Miss  Anglin 
as  Jeanette.  Not  so  long  ago,  without  having  to  wait 
for  an  answer  to  a  polite  letter,  I  was  discourteous  enough 
to  send  her  a  copy  of  The  Ice  Lens  by  registered  mail. 
I  received  an  official  receipt  from  the  New  York  post 
office,  but  never  a  word  from  Zira  herself.  .  .  . 


To  savor  the  style  of  "The  Ice  Lens"  and  Pro- 
fessor Gundelfinger's  notion  of  human  speech  as 
it  should  take  form  on  the  stage,  it  will  suffice  to 
quote  the  opening  scene  of  his  play,  which  unfolds 
in  a  college  fraternity  dormitory  under  a  "For 
God,  For  Country,  and  For  Yale"  banner  with  a 
dialogue  between  Mrs.  Dearborn  Hunter  and  one 
of  the  students,  Chauncey  Everit  DePeyster. 
Just  listen  to  them : 

Mrs.  Hunter  [glancing  in  the  direction  of  the  couch']. 
Is  n't  "it  nice  to  be  popular  like  Miss  Jeanette^  All  the 
young  men  swarm  about  her  like  bees  around  the  honey- 
suckle. I  held  the  same  position  in  this  town  when  I 
was  a  girl.  The  students  used  to  call  me  la  belle 
charmeuse,  and  many  were  the  sirens  I  put  to  mourning 
entirely  without  effort  and  absolutely  without  intention. 
\She  sways  her  fan  languidly .]  Of  course  I  was  some 
diinner  then. 

DePeyster  [with  his  usual  affectation].    Presumably 


64  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

the  picket-fence  variety  of  femininity  had  not  yet  intro- 
duced her  meager  dimensions  into  the  realm  of  fashion. 

Mrs.  Hunter  [zvitk  a  sigh].  Dear  me!  To  be  popu- 
lar nowadays,  one  must  be  painfully  slender;  nobody 
loves  the  fat  woman. 

DePeyster.  Lament  not!  There  are  still  some  of 
us  who  take  a  great  fancy  to  her  jolly  good  nature,  find- 
ing ourselves  quite  indifferent  to  her  corpulent  super- 
fluity. 

Mrs.  Hunter  [zvitk'  elation].  Oh,  Mr.  DePeyster, 
you  are  very  kind ;  I  do  so  much  appreciate  your 
sympathy. 

DePeyster.  Forsooth,  I  see  nothing  extraordinaire 
in  this  Miss  Lyon. 

Only  a  glimpse  can  be  afforded  here  of  the 
play's  hero,  John  Templeton^  a  student  who  is 
out  to  reform  the  other  students,  feeling  as  he  does 
that  "rectitude  is  worth  more  than  all  of  New- 
ton, Vergil  and  Euclid  put  together"  and  eager 
to  show  his  fellow-student  that  he  is  "a  coarse 
unhuman  brute  living  selfishly  and  sluggishly  on 
the  hoard  of  others,  stealing  what  little  it  has 
acquired  for  itself  only  by  cunning  and  conceal- 
ment, everlastingly  consuming  weeds,  quaffing 
more  than  its  body  can  hold,  and  reveling  like 
a  glutton  over  human  flesh." 

Metcalf.  You  are  enthusiastic ;  but  how  can  this 
light  be  given  to  the  many  who  need  it? 

Templeton.  I  am  trying  to  shed  it  by  writing  a 
play. 


THE  KNOCK  AT  THE  STAGE-DOOR    6^ 

Metcalf.  But  at  the  same  time,  you  are  exposing 
that  which  may  bring  anguish  to  many  an  innocent  heart 
which  is  now  apparently  happy. 

Templeton.  Temporary  sorrow  is  the  bud  which 
blossoms  into  true  happiness.  There  is  no  real  happiness 
in  the  deferment  of  grief.  This  evil,  like  the  poisonous 
plant  in  the  depths  of  the  forest,  will  thrive  and  spread 
until  it  is  brought  out  into  the  sunlight  of  an  open 
meadow.  However  intense  the  pain,  I,  seemingly  cold- 
hearted,  shall  cut  deep  with  the  knife  of  truth,  bring  the 
poison  to  the  surface,  and  then  heal  the  wound  with  the 
balm  of  love. 

Metcalf.     Your  task  requires  courage. 

Then,  as  a  parting  glimpse  of  "The  Ice  Lens," 
you  must  eavesdrop  on  the  conversation  between 
Templeton  and  Reginald  Buckingham  Adder^ 
villain  of  the  piece  but  now  reformed.    Listen : 

Adder.  I  cared  only  for  my  own  happiness  and  gave 
no  thought  to  the  wretched  condition  of  others.  I  was 
worse  than  a  selfish  fool  I  I  was  a  greedy  glutton  taking 
more  than  my  fill  of  beastly  pleasures,  and,  added  to  all, 
I  was  an  infernal  liar.  I  tried  to  win  deceptively  the 
love  of  an  innocent  girl,  and,  when  she  justly  cast  me 
off,  I  insulted  her  with  accusations  as  false  as  they  were 
vile. 

Templeton.     You  refer  to — 

Adder.  Please  don't  breathe  her  name.  I  deny  my 
ears  the  pleasure  of  hearing  it;  I  forbid  my  lips  the 
honor  to  speak  it.  But  I  am  repaid ;  God  knows  I  am 
well  repaid  for  it  all.  My  own  roommate  reports  my 
dishonesty  to  the  faculty,  and  heralds  to  the  public  my 
relations  with  a  harlot.  My  university  expels  me;  my 
body   suffers    incessant    torture    from    the    fearful    pain 


66  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

of  unsightly  diseases ;  my  friends  no  longer  know  me ; 
and  worst  of  all — my  own  mother,  who  has  never  drawn 
me  to  her  heart,  disowns  me.  God  help  me  to  forget  the 
man  she  calls  her  husband;  I  curse  every  dollar  he  has 
thrust  into  my  reckless  hand;  I  no  longer  care  to  own 
his  name.  I  long  to  start  anew,  for,  although  I  have 
rendered  myself  unfit  for  a  husband  and  a  father,  I  can 
still  be  a  man — a  man  earning  a  deserved  existence  by 
his  own  honest  labor.  But  how — how  shall  I  do  it? 
Look  at  me ;  my  God !  look  at  me ! 

Templeton.  However  black  the  sky  may  seem,  in 
time  the  sun  will  shine ;  however  wicked  our  souls  ap- 
pear, if  we  will  but  wash  away  the  scum,  we  shall  find 
good  hidden  beneath  it.  [The  famt  outlines  of  distant 
mountain  peaks  appear  in  the  fog.\ 


In  the  books  of  the  older  critics — Sarcey,  Ar- 
cher, and  all — there  occurs  again  and  again  the 
phrase,  the  obligatory  scene.  The  outlines  of  one 
are  built  up  as  "The  Ice  Lens"  unfolds — the  scene 
where  John  Templeton  is  taken  out  by  a  group  of 
his  fellow-classmen  and  spanked.  However,  one 
reads  on  and  on  without  ever  coming  to  it. 

The  amazing  thing  about  "The  Ice  Lens"  is 
not  that  the  smoldering  Gundelfinger  should  have 
written  all  this  but  that  he  should  have  written 
it  in  the  form  of  a  play.  After  all,  a  play  is  a 
work  of  the  imagination  to  be  performed  by  an- 
other on  an  instrument.  That  instrument  is  the 
theater,  and  this  strong  American  propensity  to 


THE  KNOCK  AT  THE  STAGE-DOOR     67 

write  plays  without  first  having  learned  a  little 
something  about  the  instrument  is  a  trifle  too 
reminiscent  of  the  story  of  the  man  who,  when 
asked  if  he  could  play  the  violin,  answered 
grandly:  "I  don't  know.    I  never  tried." 

His  difficulty  is  that  a  play  is  a  living  thing, 
which  cannot  live  while  part  of  it  is  lifeless.  It 
is  conceivable  that  a  poem  that  was,  for  the  most, 
unbelievable  rubbish,  might  still  have  within  it 
a  line  or  two  of  magical  and  immortal  poetry. 
Long  ago  some  one  told  me  the  story  of  an  editor's 
receiving  reams  of  the  most  incredible  metrical 
balderdash  from  an  aspiring  poetess  who  had, 
however,  stumbled  on  one  ringing,  unforgettable 
line.  In  the  midst  of  all  her  grotesque  truck,  the 
editor  found  himself  staring  wide-eyed  at  this 
single  line : 

And  the  gray  owl  called  to  its  mate  in  the  wood  that  a 
man  lay  dead  in  the  road. 

But  such  momentary  inspiration  is  lost  in  the 
collapse  of  a  worthless  play.  To  say  of  a  bad  play 
that  some  of  it  is  pretty  good  is  a  little  too  much 
like  saying  of  an  unpleasing  egg  that  at  least  part 
of  it  is  fresh. 


Ill 

GUNPOWDER  PLOTS 

AS  a  playgoer,  I  am  a  little  weary  of  many 
too  recurrent  phenomena  in  the  American 
theater,  but  of  all  things  I  resent  most  hotly  the 
employment  of  firearms  to  unnerve  an  audience. 
It  is  such  a  contemptible  subterfuge.  Your  un- 
scrupulous playwright  resorts  to  it  upon  the  most 
feeble  excuses.  When  in  doubt,  brandish  a  re- 
volver :  that  has  been  his  little  motto  these  many 
seasons.  Whenever  he  feels  that  a  maiden  in 
distress,  or  an  ominous  shadow  cast  upon  a  win- 
dow-blind, or  a  cry  of  terror  heard  off-stage  is 
not  quite  enough  to  induce  the  desired  agitation 
in  the  play-going  bosom,  he  points  a  Colts  forty- 
five  at  that  bosom  and  feels  that  the  drama  has 
been  rescued  again.  Draw  a  gun  and  you  will 
draw  an  audience.  There,  apparently,  is  the 
first  precept  in  that  hardy  manual,  "How  to  Be  a 
Playwright."     I  wonder. 

I  wonder  how  many  playgoers  are,  as  I  am, 

68 


GUNPOWDER  PLOTS  69 

gun-shy — how  many  are,  as  I  am,  rendered 
dumbly  miserable  by  the  notice  that  a  pistol  is  to 
play  one  of  the  leading  roles  in  the  piece  of  the 
evening.  The  stage  revolver,  harmless  enough  in 
itself,  is  one  of  the  great  American  nuisances,  like 
the  ticket  speculator  and  the  dialect  comedian  and 
the  forty-two-year-old  ingenue.  We  bear  up 
under  them.    But  who  likes  them? 

The  purpose  of  the  pistol  in  stage-craft  is  akin 
to  the  role  of  the  harrow  in  agriculture,  or  the 
business  of  the  masseur's  fingers  before  the  cold 
cream  is  applied.  It  brings  the  playgoer  forward 
to  the  edge  of  his  seat,  induces  a  mild  sweat,  and 
leaves  him  in  that  state  of  taut  nerves  which 
makes  him  a  pitiably  easy  victim  to  any  sugges- 
tion the  author  may  have  in  mind. 

I  resent  this  because  it  is  taking  a  base  advan- 
tage. It  is  too  easy.  It  is  like  cheating  at  soli- 
taire. Your  true  playwright,  like  Frank  Craven, 
is  above  such  mean  devices.  In  his  comedy,  "The 
First  Year,"  he  brews  the  same  suspense,  the  same 
sweet  agony,  but  he  does  it  with  some  chivalry. 
He  throws  the  playgoer  into  a  palpitation  over 
the  question  as  to  whether  or  not  that  green  wait- 
ress will  remember  to  bring  in  the  melon  before 
the  soup.     Or,  as  she  stands  gesturing  noncha- 


70  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

lantly  with  the  vegetable  dish  held  in  her  hand> 
whether  that  dish  will  or  will  not  crash  against 
the  edge  of  the  dining-room  table.  At  that  mag- 
nificently suspensive  moment  in  "The  First 
Year,"  I  have  counted  eight  women  in  front  of  me 
all  cowering  and  putting  their  fingers  to  their  ears. 
With  the  peril  of  that  vegetable  dish  Craven  con- 
trives more  genuine  dramatic  agony  than  do  the 
bullying  melodramatists  with  whole  arsenals  at 
their  disposal. 

My  favorite  playwright  is  Euripides  because 
he  wrote  ninety  pieces  for  the  theater  without  in- 
troducing a  gun  in  one  of  them.  But,  frustrated 
by  the  fact  that  it  is  not  every  evening  one  can 
find  a  piece  of  his  being  acted  in  my  town,  I  then 
go  by  preference  to  plays  involving  the  villainy 
of  toreadors  or  to  hot  romances  unfolded  against 
Sicilian  or  Etruscan  backgrounds.  Even  then  the 
assurance  is  not  absolute,  but  the  chances  are  that 
whatever  murder  is  to  be  attended  to  during  the 
evening  will  be  managed  with  a  knife  stuck  quietly 
and  modestly  between  the  ribs. 

I  had  hoped  that  the  war  would  cure  me  of 
these  weak  tremors.  I  remember  saying  as  much 
the  night  that  the  Argonne  drive  began.  It  was 
two  o'clock  on  that  momentous  September  morn- 


GUNPOWDER  PLOTS  71 

ing  in  1918,  and  up  the  road  that  led  from  Souilly 
toward  Montfaucon  three  transported  Broadway- 
ites  were  plodding  side  by  side,  a  quondam  actor 
and  two  ex-dramatic  critics:  William  Slavens 
McNutt,  Arthur  Ruhl,  and  myself.  (Ruhl,  as  I 
recall,  wore  a  shawl).  The  guns  were  firing  in 
concert  from  Alsace  to  the  channel — a  400-mile 
row  of  cannon,  all  going  off  at  one  time,  the 
heaviest  artillery  preparation  the  world  had  ever 
heard.  I  had  been  spending  a  considerable  por- 
tion of  the  preceding  three  months  under  the  guns 
and  had  soon  become  so  used  to  them  that  I  could 
sleep  placidly  away,  just  as  one  gets  used  to  a 
flat  near  the  Sixth  Avenue  Elevated  or  to  a  berth 
on  the  New  York  Central.  And  even  to  this  mon- 
strous redoubling  of  the  ructions,  this  continuous 
blast  at  which  the  very  earth  twitched  and  trem- 
bled like  a  sleeping  setter  with  a  nightmare,  we 
became  accustomed,  and  by  daylight  were  talking 
through  it  as  though  it  had  not  been  there. 

And  I  remember  agreeing  with  Ruhl  that  at 
least  the  war  would  do  one  thing  for  us.  The 
world  might  remain  a  somewhat  precarious  place 
for  democracy,  but  we  could  reasonably  expect  to 
attend  an  American  crook  play  without  going 
through  all  the  old  pangs  of  the  gun-shy.    At  one 


72  SHOUTS  AND  MUftMURS 

silly  little  revolver  thrust  suddenly  into  the  sus- 
pense of  the  scene,  we  should  merely  yawn  and 
wonder  where  to  sup  after  the  play. 

In  my  first  week  back  home  I  went  guilelessly 
to  "The  Follies."  There  was  an  interlude,  in- 
tended, I  understand,  to  be  extremely  comic,  in 
which  that  fine  comedian,  Bert  Williams,  had  to 
sit  in  front  of  a  shooting-gallery  target  (like  a 
large  black  son  of  a  latter-day  Tell)  and  suffer 
the  expert  marksman  to  pick  off  the  bulbs  which 
formed  an  aureole  for  his  woolly  head.  Williams 
was  supposed  to  turn  as  white  as  possible  and 
tremble  with  fear.  He  did.  So  did  I.  But  he 
was  acting.    The  war  had  been  fought  in  vain. 

Small  wonder,  then,  if  I  find  myself  hoping  in 
each  scene  that  a  temporary  derangement  of  the 
property-man  will  have  loaded  the  revolver  with 
something  worse  than  blanks,  and  that  an  actor 
or  so  will  be  mowed  down  before  my  eyes.  This 
uncalculated  thrill  has  not  yet  happened,  but  I 
suppose  we  all  keep  on  going  to  the  theater  in  the 
hope  that  some  day  it  will. 

Failing  that  sweet  revenge,  we  can  distil  some 
comfort  when  the  gun  play  goes  wrong  in  less 
sensational  ways.  I  wish  I  had  been  there  on  that 
great  occasion  they  tell  about  when  the  gun  fired 


GUNPOWDER  PLOTS  73 

at  Simon  Legree  did  not  go  off.  Click-click^  and 
not  a  sound.  Legree^  with  fine  presence  of  mind, 
pressed  a  hand  to  his  breast,  cast  his  eyes  upward, 
cried  out  weakly,  "Curses,  that  old  heart  trouble 
come  back  again,"  and  fell  dead. 

And  then  one  night  there  was  the  gleam  of  a 
silver  lining  in  the  cloud  that  overhung  that  mad 
English  melodrama,  "Bulldog  Drummond." 
The  exceptionally  heavy  villain  was  supposed  to 
gain  gratified  possession  of  the  shiny  revolver  and 
fire  point-blank  at  the  dauntless  bosom  of  A.  E. 
Matthews  as  Drummond.  There  was  to  be  no 
report.  Matthews  was  to  smile  and  say  contemp- 
tuously, "My  good  man,  I  would  scarcely  have 
let  you  amuse  yourself  with  that  toy  had  I  not 
known  it  was  unloaded."  (Business  of  looking 
thwarted  on  the  part  of  the  heavy.)  Only,  on  this 
one  night,  the  aforesaid  heavy  picked  up  the 
wrong  revolver.  He  fired  twice.  Both  shots 
sprayed  the  heroic  waistcoat  with  powder.  Of 
course  that  did  not  hurt  Matthews  himself  any, 
but  it  did  considerably  impair  the  force  of  the 
line  just  ahead.  So  Matthews  looked  contemptu- 
ously at  the  fellow,  murmured,  "You're  a  damned 
bad  shot,  my  good  man,"  and  sauntered  off  amid 
the  audible  appreciation  of  a  much-amused  audi- 


74  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

ence.  Afterward,  the  heavy  actor  challenged  him 
in  the  wings.  "If  that  unfortunate  contretemps 
should  occur  again,"  he  said,  "I  trust  you  will  not 
indulge  yourself  in  that  wretched  jest.  It  seems, 
if  I  may  say  so,  in  questionable  taste.  It  made 
me  look  such  a  fool." 

But  these  satisfactions  are  rare.  I  am  tired  of 
gun  play  on  the  stage.  I  am  tired  of  many  things 
on  the  stage.  The  following  items  in  the  theater, 
for  instance,  all  weary  me  a  little: 

1.  Revivals  of  "Twelfth  Night"  in  which  the 
Viola  is  played  by  a  matron  of  forty-six  years. 

2.  English  comedies  in  which,  just  before  the 
final  curtain,  the  tall  muscular  hero  announces 
his  intention  of  leaving  next  morning  for  the 
Straits  Settlements  or  Burma  and  "escape  from  it 
all,"  thus  causing  the  pallid  heroine  to  rush  into 
his  arms. 

3.  French  comedies  in  which  the  translator's 
notion  of  simple  idiomatic  speech  might  be  judged 
from  this  sample:  "It  is  not  necessary  that  you 
go,  is  it  not,  Mussoor*?" 

4.  American  comedies  of  sentiment  in  which 
the  peculations  of  the  young  bank  clerk  and  the 
indiscretions  of  the  heroine  are  all  purged  by  the 
device  of  adjourning  the  play  to  a  rural  setting 


...,..^. 


GUNPOWDER  PLOTS  yj 

and  playing  the  final  moments  against  a  green 
canvas  meadow. 

5.  Touching  scenes  acted  on  the  assumption 
that  no  mother  embraces  her  progeny  without 
rolling  her  eyes  tearfully  to  the  chandelier. 

6.  Plays  in  which  any  one  of  the  following 
lines  occurs  more  than  eight  times: 

How  many  lumps'? 

There  must  be  some  mistake. 

You  here? 

You  mean? 

I  was  never  more  serious  in  my  life. 

I  do  not  know  why  I  am  telling  all  this  to  you. 

Won't  you  sit  down"? 

But  I  am  most  tired  of  being  threatened  with  a 
pistol-shot.  The  next  time  a  second  act  begins 
with  a  frowning  broker  entering  the  richly  car- 
peted library,  walking  across  to  the  massive, 
carved  walnut  desk,  opening  the  desk  drawer, 
taking  out  a  bright  revolver,  examining  it,  nod- 
ding with  grim  satisfaction,  putting  it  back,  clos- 
ing the  drawer  softly,  and  ringing  for  the  butler — 
the  next  time  that  happens,  I  shall  reach  for  my 
hat  and  quietly  leave  the  theater.  I  shall  drive 
immediately  to  the  Pennsylvania  Station,  take  a 
train  for  Washington,  and  call  next  morning  on 
the  secretary  of  state.    Dispassionately  but  firmly, 


76  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

I  shall  tell  him  that  at  the  next  international 
conference  on  disarmament  at  which  the  United 
States  is  represented,  he  must  take  up  seriously 
the  question  of  disarming  the  drama.  That  is,  if 
he  wants  me  to  go  on  reviewing  plays. 


IV 
CAPSULE  CRITICISM 

THERE  is  a  popular  notion  that  a  dramatic 
criticism,  to  be  worthy  of  the  name,  must  be 
an  article  of  at  least  one  thousand  words,  mostly 
polysyllables  and  all  devoted — perfectly  devoted 
— to  the  grave  discussion  of  some  play  as  written 
and  performed.  To  this  notion,  it  must  be  sadly 
admitted,  each  generation  of  writers  on  the  thea- 
ter have  lent  some  color. 

In  such  an  article  it  is  presumed  that  there  will 
be  one  judicious  use  of  the  word  "adequate"  and 
one  resort  to  the  expression  "treading  the  boards" ; 
also  at  least  one  regretful  shaking  of  the  head  over 
the  hopeless  inferiority  of  the  performance  in 
question  to  (a)  the  way  it  was  done  in  some  other 
country  two  years  before  or  (b)  the  way  it  would 
have  been  done  in  the  critic's  own  country  thirty 
years  ago.  Such  ingredients  are  expected  with 
reasonable  confidence.  But  one  thing  is  certain. 
The  piece,  to  be  real  dramatic  criticism,  can 
scarcely  be  briefer  than  a  thousand  words. 

77 


78  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

The  tradition  of  prolixity  and  the  dullness  in  all 
such  writing  is  as  old  as  Aristotle  and  as  lasting  as 
William  Archer.  A  man  who  will  talk  gaily  of  a 
play  will  yet  feel  a  certain  solemnity  wetting  down 
his  spirits  the  moment  he  finds  himself  called 
upon  to  discuss  it  in  print.  Even  Mr.  Dickens, 
who  could  take  his  beloved  theater  lightly 
enough  when  he  was  weaving  it  into  a  novel  and 
who  always  packed  his  letters  full  of  the  most 
engaging  accounts  of  the  farces  and  melodramas 
he  was  seeing,  became  rigid  with  self-importance 
and  chill  with  scrupulosity  the  moment  he  knew 
he  was  reviewing  a  piece  for  publication.  If  he 
had  undertaken  to  supply  such  comment  to  ''The 
Examiner"  or  to  our  own  "Atlantic,"  a  voice 
within  him  seemed  to  whisper,  "Remember,  now, 
you're  a  dramatic  critic."  And,  lo!  he  was  no 
more  Dickensy  than  the  merest  penny-a-liner. 
This  was  true  to  some  extent  of  Walt  Whitman 
and  certainly  was  true  of  Edgar  Allen  Poe.  (The 
strangest  people,  it  will  be  observed,  have  put  in 
some  time  as  dramatic  critics;  such  people,  for 
instance,  as  Eugene  Field  and  Richard  Harding 
Davis  and  Edward  Bok  and  Elihu  Root).  Prob- 
ably they  were  all  verbose. 

Yet  I  suspect  it  could  be  demonstrated  that  the 


CAPSULE  CRITICISM  79 

most  telling  of  all  dramatic  criticisms  have  found 
expression  in  less  than  fifty  words.  Also  that 
the  best  of  all  were  never  written  at  all.  To 
substantiate  this,  I  have  been  raking  my  memory 
for  the  ones  that  have  lodged  there  while  longer 
and  more  majestical  utterances  have  faded  out  of 
mind  as  completely  as  though  they  had  never  been 
written. 

What  we  are  looking  for,  of  course,  is  the 
happy  sentence  that  speaks  volumes.  As  an  ex- 
ample, consider  the  familiar  problem  presented  by 
the  players  who  can  do  everything  on  the  stage 
except  act.  I  have  in  mind  a  still  celebrated 
beauty  to  whom  that  beauty  opened  wide  the 
stage-door  full  thirty  years  ago.  Since  then  she 
has  devoted  herself  most  painstakingly  to  justi- 
fying her  admission.  She  has  keen  intelligence 
and  great  industry.  She  has  learned  every  trick 
of  voice  and  gesture  that  can  be  taught.  She  has 
acquired  everything  except  some  substitute  for 
the-  inborn  gift.  Something  to  that  effect,  ex- 
pressed, of  course,  as  considerately  as  possible, 
ought,  it  seems  to  me,  to  be  a  part  of  any  report 
on  her  spasmodic  reappearances. 

It  usually  takes  about  five  hundred  words. 
Yet  Mr.  Cohan  managed  it  pretty  well  in  a  single 


8o  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

sentence  when  he  was  passing  on  a  similar  case  in 
one  of  his  own  companies.  An  attempt  was  made 
to  argue  with  him  that  the  veteran  actor  under  re- 
view was  a  good  fellow  and  all  that.  "He's  a 
fine  fellow,  all  right,"  Cohan  assented  amiably 
enough,  and  then  added,  with  murderous  good- 
humor,  "There  's  really  only  one  thing  I  've  got 
against  him.     He  's  stage-struck." 

You  see,  often  the  perfection  of  these  capsule 
criticisms  are  achieved  by  mere  bluntness — are 
arrived  at  by  the  no  more  ingenious  process  than 
that  of  speaking  out  in  meeting.  I  was  struck 
with  that  on  the  melancholy  occasion  when  John 
and  Ethel  Barrymore  lent  a  momentary  and  de- 
lusive glamour  to  a  piece  called  "Clair  de  Lune" 
by  Michael  Strange,  the  exquisitely  beautiful 
poetess  whom  Mr.  Barrymore  had  just  married. 
By  the  time  its  third  act  had  unfolded  before 
the  pained  eyes  of  its  first  audience,  there  was 
probably  not  a  single  person  in  that  audience  who 
was  not  thinking  that,  with  all  the  good  plays  ly- 
ing voiceless  on  the  shelf,  Michael  Strange's  sham- 
bling and  laboriously  macabre  piece  would 
scarcely  have  been  produced  had  it  not  been  for 
the  somewhat  irrelevant  circumstance  of  her  hav- 
ing married  Mr.  Barrymore,  the  surest  meansj 


CAPSULE  CRITICISM  81 

apparently,  of  engaging  his  priceless  services  for 
one's  drama.  Now,  some  such  opinion,  I  say,  was 
buzzing  in  every  first-night  head.  All  the  critics 
thought  just  that.  Yet  they  all  described  nervous 
circles  around  this  central  idea,  dancing  skittishly 
about  it  as  though  it  had  been  a  May-pole.  Full 
of  what  Gladys  Unger  was  once  inspired  to  call 
"a  dirty  delicacy,"  reluctant,  perhaps,  to  acknowl- 
edge the  personal  equation  in  criticism,  and 
weighed  down,  probably,  by  an  ancient  respect 
for  the  marriage  tie,  they  avoided  all  audible  spec- 
ulation as  to  why  Mr.  Barrymore  had  put  the 
piece  on  at  all.  All,  that  is,  except  one.  Mr. 
Whittaker  of  "The  Chicago  Tribune" — the  same 
Mr.  Whittaker,  by  the  way,  who  married  the  fair 
Ina  Claire — cheerfully  put  the  prevailing  thought 
into  three  devastating  words.  He  entitled  his 
review:    "For  the  Love  of  Mike." 

That  is  not  the  only  time  I  have  seen  the  very 
essence  and  spirit  of  a  review  distilled  in  a  single 
head-line.  It  happened  on  the  occasion  when  the 
late  Sir  Herbert  Tree,  ever  and  always  recogniz- 
able behind  the  most  ornate  make-ups,  ever  and 
always  himself  through  all  faint-hearted  efforts 
at  disguise,  appeared  for  the  first  time  in  London 
in  "The  Merchant  of  Venice."     It  was  on  that 


82  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

occasion  that  his  more  illustrious  brother,  Max 
Beerbohm,  then  merely  the  dramatic  critic  of 
"The  Saturday  Review,"  went  back-stage  to  felic- 
itate the  star  but  was  overlooked  in  the  crush  of 
notables  who  were  crowding  around.  When  Tree 
chided  him  afterwards  for  unfraternal  neglect. 
Max  murmured:  "Ah,  I  was  there  but  you  did 
not  know  me  in  your  beard."  Of  course  Max 
could  not  write  the  review  of  his  own  brother's 
performance — a  task  delegated,  therefore,  to  John 
Palmer,  whose  comment  on  the  play  was  awaited, 
naturally  enough,  with  considerable  interest. 
Palmer  wrote  a  polite,  though  mildly  derisive, 
review  of  the  production  and  entitled  it:  "Shy- 
lock  as  Mr.  Tree." 

I  find  that  the  crispest  reviews  which  come  back 
in  this  effort  at  memory  have  taken  many  forms. 
For  instance,  when  it  was  quite  the  leading  Ameri- 
can sin  to  attend  the  agitating  performances  of 
"Sapho"  by  Olga  Nethersole,  Franklin  P.  Adams 
made  his  comment  in  one  quatrain : 

I  love  litde  Olga, 

Her  plays  are  so  warm. 
And  if  I  don't  see  them 

They  '11  do  me  no  harm. 

The  late  Charles  Frohman,  on  the  other  hand, 
was  likely  to  sum  up  plays  most  felicitously  in 


CAPSULE  CRITICISM  83 

telegrams.  Once,  when  he  was  producing  an 
English  comedy  at  his  cherished  Empire  Theater 
in  New  York,  he  received  just  after  the  premiere 
a  cable  of  eager,  though  decently  nervous,  inquiry 
from  the  author  in  London,  who  could  not  bear  to 
wait  until  the  reviews  and  the  box-ofRce  state- 
ments reached  him.  "How  's  it  going*?"  was  the 
inquiry.     Frohman  cabled  back:     "It's  gone." 

Of  course,  many  of  the  best  capsule  criticisms 
are  classics.  There  was  Warren's  tart  comment 
on  Joe  Jefferson's  performance  as  Bob  Acres  in 
"The  Rivals,"  a  brilliant  feat  of  comedic  genius 
made  out  of  whole  cloth,  so  little  origin  did  it 
have  in  the  role  as  originally  written.  "Ha!" 
quoth  Warren,  "Sheridan  twenty  miles  away." 
And  there  was  the  feline  stroke  usually  ascribed 
to  Wilde — the  one  which  said  that  Tree's  Hamlet 
was  funny  without  being  vulgar.  And  there  was 
the  much-quoted  knifing  of  still  another  Hamlet 
by  an  unidentified  bandit  who  said,  after  the 
performance,  that  it  would  have  been  a  fine  time 
to  settle  the  great  controversy  as  to  who  wrote  the 
play:  one  need  merely  have  watched  beside  the 
graves  of  Shakespere  and  Bacon  to  see  which  one 
turned  over. 

Fairly  familiar,  also,  are  two  ascribed  by  tra- 
dition to  Eugene  Field,  in  the  days  when  he  was 


84  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

dramatic  critic  of  "The  Denver  Post"  and  used 
to  go  to  the  once-famous  Tabor  Grand  to  see 
"Modjesky  ez  Cameel,"  the  days  when  the  peak 
of  the  season  for  him  was  marked  by  the  engage- 
ment of  a  vagrant,  red-headed  soubrette  named 
Minnie  Maddern.  Of  one  performance  of  "Ham- 
let" there,  Field's  entire  review  consisted  of  two 
short  melancholy  sentences.  He  wrote:  "So- 
and-so  played  Hamlet  last  night  at  the  Tabor 
Grand.  He  played  it  till  one  o'clock."  And  it 
was  Field  who  haunted  the  declining  years  of 
Creston  Clarke  with  his  review  of  that  actor's 
Lear.  Clarke,  a  journeying  nephew  of  Edwin 
Booth,  passed  through  Denver  and  gave  there  a 
singularly  unimpressive  and  unregal  performance 
in  that  towering  tragedy.  Field  could  n't  bear  it 
and  iinally  vented  his  emotions  in  one  sentence. 
Said  he:  "Mr.  Clarke  played  the  King  all 
evening  as  though  under  constant  fear  that  some 
one  else  was  about  to  play  the  Ace." 

Of  course  some  beautiful  capsule  criticisms  are 
doomed  to  a  lesser  fame  because  it  is  so  difficult 
to  detach  them  from  their  circumstances  and  their 
context.  This  is  true,  for  instance,  of  several 
deft  summaries  by  Heywood  Broun.  When  some 
years  ago  one  Butler  Davenport  put  on  a  juve- 


CAPSULE  CRITICISM  85 

nilely  obscene  little  play  at  his  own  little  theater 
in  New  York,  Broun  scowled  and  wrote,  "Some 
one  should  spank  young  Mr.  Davenport  and  take 
away  his  piece  of  chalk."  Then  there  was  the 
hilarious  episode  which  grew  out  of  the  produc- 
tion for  one  afternoon  in  the  spring  of  1917  of 
Wedekind's  "Friihlingserwachen,"  which  Broun 
translated  as  "The  Spring  Offensive."  In  his 
little  piece  on  the  subject,  he  mentioned  casually 
that  to  his  mind  an  actor  named  Stein  gave  in 
the  leading  role  the  worst  performance  he  had 
ever  seen  on  any  stage.  Stein  sued  for  damages, 
but  the  court  decided,  after  some  diverting  testi- 
mony, that  after  all  a  critic  was  free  to  express 
his  esthetic  judgment,  however  incompetent,  or 
however  painful  it  might  prove  to  the  subject. 
Later  it  became  Mr.  Broun's  embarrassing  duty  to 
review  another  performance  by  the  same  aggrieved 
Stein  in  another  play.  Broun  evaded  the  duty 
until  the  last  sentence,  where  he  could  have  been 
found  murmuring,  "Mr.  Stein  was  not  up  to  his 
standard." 

I  am  inclined  to  think,  however,  that  the  best 
of  the  tabloid  reviews  have  been  oral.  Coleridge's 
famous  comment  on  Kean's  Hamlet — that  seeing 
it  was  like  reading  Shakspere  by  flashes  of  light- 


86  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

ning — was  said  by  him  but  written  by  somebody 
else,  wasn't  it'?  Certainly  the  two  best  of  my 
day  were  oral  criticisms.  One  was  whispered  in 
my  ear  by  a  comely  young  actress  named  Tallulah 
Bankhead,  who  was  sitting  incredulous  before  a 
deliberate  and  intentional  revival  of  Maeter- 
linck's "Aglavaine  and  Selysette,"  a  monstrous 
piece  of  perfumed  posturing,  meaning  exactly 
nothing.  Two  gifted  young  actresses  and  a  con- 
siderable bit  of  scenery  were  involved,  and  much 
pretentious  rumbling  of  voice  and  wafting  of 
gesture  had  gone  into  the  enterprise.  Miss  Bank- 
head,  fearful,  apparently,  lest  she  be  struck  dead 
for  impiety,  became  desperate  enough  to  whisper, 
"There  is  less  in  this  than  meets  the  eye." 

The  other  was  tossed  off  by  that  delightful 
companion  and  variegated  actor,  Beerbohm  Tree. 
Hurrying  from  California  to  New  York,  he  joined 
at  the  eleventh  hour  the  already  elaborated  re- 
hearsals of  "Henry  VIII,"  into  which  he  was  to 
step  in  the  familiar  scarlet  of  Wolsey.  He  was 
expected  to  survey  whatever  had  been  accom- 
plished by  his  delegates  and  pass  judgment.  He 
approved  cheerfully  enough  of  everything  until 
he  came  to  the  collection  of  damsels  that  had 
been  dragged  into  the  theater  as  ladies  in  waiting 


CAPSULE  CRITICISM  87 

to  the  queen.  He  looked  at  them  in  pained  and 
prolonged  dissatisfaction  and  then  said  what  we 
have  all  wanted  to  say  of  the  extra-women  in 
nearly  every  throne-room  and  ball-room  and 
school-room  scene  since  the  theater  began. 
"Ladies,"  said  Tree,  peering  at  them  plaintively 
through  his  monocle,  "just  a  little  more  virginity, 
if  you  don't  mind." 


FOR  THE  KIDDIES 

AFTER  many  bitter  experiences  in  the  thea- 
ters of  New  York  at  holiday-time,  I  feel  I 
should  warn  all  playgoers,  and  especially  all 
parents,  nurses,  governesses,  and  aunts,  against 
any  performance  especially  advertised  as  intended 
for  children.  When  the  playbill  further  an- 
nounces that  in  addition  to  presenting  something 
meant  for  "the  kiddies,"  the  management  intends 
to  give  the  proceeds  to  this  or  that  suffering  char- 
ity, you  are  hereby  cautioned  to  reach  for  your 
hat  and  run  as  though  the  devil  were  after  you. 

Too  often  a  benefit  performance  is  merely  an 
outlet  for  somebody's  exhibition  complex,  and 
when  that  is  coupled  with  a  little  of  the  insuffer- 
able condescension  which  some  adults  persist  in 
showing  toward  the  uncorrupted,  the  mere  spec- 
tator is  in  for  a  harrowing  spectacle.  I  have  sat 
in  Christmas  week  through  the  most  kittenish  of 
recitals  by  Kitty  Cheatham,  surrounded  by  rows 

and  rows  of  suffering  innocents.     I  have  seen  a 

88 


FOR  THE  KIDDIES  89 

group  of  well-meaning  grown-ups  take  "Alice  in 
Wonderland"  and  utterly  spoil  it  for  a  whole 
theaterful  of  small  boys  and  girls  who  had  never 
done  anything  to  them.  I  have  seen  Charles 
Dickens's  immortal  "Christmas  Carol"  done  into 
a  marionette  show,  so  involved  and  so  indistinct 
that  only  those  who  had  read  the  tale  often 
enough  to  know  it  by  heart  could  have  had  the 
faintest  notion  of  what  it  was  all  about  or  the  least 
equipment  for  being  anything  more  than  intensely 
annoyed.  At  each  of  these  benign  festivals,  I 
know  that  the  children  in  their  hearts  were  wish- 
ing they  could  escape  to  the  nearest  Chaplin  pic- 
ture down  the  street,  where,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
they  would  have  found  a  thousand  times  more  art, 
a  thousand  times  more  beauty,  a  thousand  times 
more  truth. 

When,  in  the  name  of  Charles  Dickens,  of  all 
persons,  a  monster  benefit  was  held  in  London 
early  in  1922  for  the  endowment  of  a  Children's 
Library,  the  blessed  committee  in  charge  wrote  to 
Shaw  for  his  benediction  and  had  their  noses 
bitten  off  with  the  following  retort : 

I  am  obliged  to  make  an  iron  rule  not  to  give  my 
name  to  bodies  that  I  do  not  actually  work  on.  But 
I  am  good  for  a  couple  of  guineas  if  the  committee  will 


90  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

assure  me  that  the  library  will  not  consist  of  what  are 
called  children's  books.  Dickens  took  care  to  point  out 
that  he  read  Smollett  and  Fielding  and  all  the  other 
grown-up  books  he  could  lay  his  hands  on  (as  I  did 
myself),  and  that  any  harm  that  was  in  them  did  not 
exist  for  him.  If  the  library  is  to  be  in  the  hands  of 
people  who  ban  "The  Arabian  Nights"  as  immoral  and 
"Roderick  Random"  as  improper,  it  will  be  fraud  to 
Tise  the  name  of  Dickens  to  get  money  for  it.  I  should 
say  that  the  first  condition  of  a  children's  library  is  that 
there  should  be  no  children's  books  in  it. 


To  which  I  say,  "Amen."  Shaw  was  saying 
what  had  been  long  in  my  heart  and  which  welled 
up  most  irrepressibly  one  afternoon  not  long  ago 
when  the  few  free  hours  of  the  Little  Theater's 
stage  were  preempted  by  an  arty  and  somewhat 
insipid  revival  of  "The  Winter's  Tale,"  which 
was  tagged  in  a  singularly  forbidding  description 
as  "the  first  synthetic  production  in  New  York." 
The  proceeds  were  dedicated  to  the  New  York 
Kindergarten  Association  and  the  program  fur- 
ther asserted  that  the  production  had  been  "or- 
ganized by  a  group  of  parents  and  others  inter- 
ested in  the  establishment  of  a  theater  for  young 
people."  Under  the  spell  of  this  sort  of  drum- 
beating,  considerable  numbers  of  youngsters  at- 
tended, marshaled  by  resolute  governesses.  The 
spectacle  of  their  confinement  could  be  fittingly 


FOR  THE  KIDDIES  91 

described  only  by  the  Mark  Twain  who  wrote  the 
harrowing  Sunday-school  chapter  in  "Tom  Saw- 
yer." The  performance  provoked  in  the  adult 
passer-by  a  variety  of  emotions,  including  won- 
der and  cynical  amusement,  and  stirred  up  a  few 
reflections  on  Shakspere  and  benefits  and  labels, 
and  what  not. 

For  some  reason  it  brought  suddenly  back  to 
mind  the  occasion  when  the  desire  to  produce  a 
play — any  play — ^burned  unquenchably  within  a 
group  of  sophomoric  bosoms  in  Hamilton  College. 
There  being  at  the  time  no  dramatic  society  on 
the  campus,  it  was  necessary  to  form  one,  and 
there  having  been  not  the  slightest  trace  of  popu- 
lar demand  for  such  an  enterprise,  its  promoters 
felt  a  trifle  apprehensive.  Two  unwelcome  con- 
tingencies suggested  themselves  as  on  the  cards  for 
the  premiere.  The  rival  classes  might  throw 
things,  or — which  was  a  prospect  almost  equally 
dismaying — they  might  not  even  attend.  After 
due  reflection  on  these  possibilities,  the  wily  pro- 
moters announced  that  the  entire  profits  of  the 
venture  would  be  poured  into  the  empty  exchequer 
of  one  of  the  athletic  teams  and  thus,  in  one  su- 
perb gesture,  they  justified  their  scheme  and 
gagged  their  critics. 


^2  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

This  memory,  in  turn,  brought  up  with  it  out 
of  the  more  recent  past  an  utterly  irrelevant  story 
of  a  production  that  was  never  made  at  all.  Ac- 
cording to  the  tale,  which  may  or  may  not  be  true, 
a  Broadway  manager  decided  to  test  the  values  of 
a  problematical  manuscript  by  projecting  it  for 
one  matinee  performance  that  could  be  handily 
managed  by  one  of  his  companies  then  playing  an 
established  success  in  a  city  not  more  than  a  thou- 
sand miles  from  Unadilla  Forks,  New  York.  The 
proceeds  were  to  go  to  a  local  charity  and  the 
actors  were,  therefore,  requested  to  play  without 
any  other  compensation  than  the  heart-warming 
consciousness  of  doing  good — good  to  the  poor, 
that  is,  not  to  the  manager.  Quite  crudely  at  this 
point  the  Actors'  Equity  raised  the  question 
whether  the  local  charity  had  asked  for  the  per- 
formance, or  whether  the  performance,  needing 
at  once  an  audience  and  an  excuse,  had  asked  for 
the  charity.  It  seemed  that  the  latter  was  the 
case,  whereupon  the  players  insisted  perversely  on 
being  paid  for  their  work.  So  the  performance 
was  never  held.  The  tale  may  or  may  not  be 
true.  Perhaps  it  is  only  one  of  those  stories  which 
get  around  somehow. 

In  the  case  of  "The  Winter's  Tale"  we  are 


aL 


FOR  THE  KIDDIES  93 

informed  and  believe  that  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Maxwell 
Armfield  put  it  on  by  invitation.  We  could  even 
believe  that,  though  reluctant,  they  were  per- 
suaded to  produce  it  because  of  a  burning  convic- 
tion that  there  should  be  more  funds  in  the  treas- 
ury of  the  New  York  Kindergarten  Association. 
But,  because  of  the  spurious  element  in  so  many 
so-called  benefits,  it  is  hereby  suggested  that  it 
would  have  been  better — and  that  in  all  such 
cases  it  would  be  better — to  have  the  announce- 
ments and  the  programs  answer  specifically  in  be- 
half of  the  public  the  question  raised  by  the  Ac- 
tors' Equity  Association  in  behalf  of  the  players. 
Such  specification  would  have  been  peculiarly 
suitable  in  this  instance  because  of  the  suspicion 
which  the  performance  itself  was  bound  to  beget 
in  the  mind  of  the  crafty  playgoer.  He  was  cer- 
tain to  wonder  why  any  charity  in  need  of  funds 
should  lean  on  so  broken  a  reed  as  an  arrestingly 
incompetent  production  of  one  of  Shakspere's 
less  popular  comedies.  Becoming  suspicious,  he 
would  then  wonder  why  on  earth  any  one  honestly 
interested  in  promoting  a  theater  for  youngsters 
should  have  found  appropriate  for  the  purpose  a 
production  of  this  play  about  marital  jealousy, 
trial  for  adultery,  and  what  not,  a  production, 


94  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

moreover,  from  which  some  one  had  squeezed  or 
washed  almost  all  the  joy  and  color  and  vitality. 

There  is  a  good  deal  of  nonesense  aired  from 
time  to  time  in  behalf  of  a  theater  for  children. 
Such  an  institution,  while  requiring  considerable 
endowment,  is  entirely  a  possibility.  It  is  not  a 
crying  need,  because  every  season  brings  many 
plays  to  town  which  are  entirely  suitable  for  play- 
goers in  pinafores  and  knickerbockers,  infinitely 
more  suitable,  for  instance,  than  "The  Winter's 
Tale,"  even  when  censored  and  cut  to  the  quick  as 
this  one  was.  Effort  could  more  frugally  be  spent 
in  arranging  daytime  performances  of  such  plays, 
as  did  the  Drama  League  with  "Abraham  Lin- 
coln" last  season.  Or  by  circularizing  apprehen- 
sive parents  with  weekly  advices  as  to  the  moral 
state  of  the  current  bills.  Perhaps  the  advisory 
board  could  even  undertake  the  burden  of  pur- 
chasing seats,  though  this  last  suggestion  is  reluc- 
tantly set  down  by  one  who  thinks  all  young  folks 
should  begin  their  play-going  careers  in  the  gal- 
lery and  move  downstairs  by  easy  stages  with  ad- 
vancing years.  Presenting  a  youngster  with  two 
aisle  seats  in  the  orchestra  is  like  arranging  for 
him  to  enter  college  as  a  senior.  He  will  lose 
something  in  the  process. 

The  only  respect  in  which  this  "Winter's  Tale" 


FOR  THE  KIDDIES  95) 

seemed  peculiarly  adapted  to  the  young  was  its 
cabbage-leaf  aspect  caused  by  a  cutting  and  re- 
arrangement of  the  text  so  ruthless  as  almost  en- 
tirely to  delete  that  decent  interval  which  Shaks- 
pere  provided  to  allow  for  the  birth  of  Perdita. 
The  term  "synthetic"  used  in  describing  the  pro- 
duction doubtless  referred  to  some  effort  to  har- 
monize all  the  colors,  movements,  lights,  and 
tones  with  the  mood  of  each  scene.  The  only  per- 
ceptible result  of  such  effort  was  in  the  pictures  of 
pleasing  composition  into  which  the  players  were 
forever  falling,  somewhat  in  the  manner  of 
kaleidoscopic  fragments  falling  into  patterns. 
The  concentration  on  this  phase  of  the  synthesis 
was  so  fierce  that  there  was  seemingly  no  time  to 
develop  the  acting  values  of  the  play  or  to  find 
and  train  voices  for  an  appreciative  utterance  of 
its  beautiful  text. 

If  a  note  of  exasperation  has  crept  into  this 
report,  it  must  come  from  a  certain  weariness  at 
the  frequent  spectacle  of  the  Shakspere  and  Ibsen 
plays  being  manhandled  up  our  side  streets  in  a 
manner  to  which  no  one  would  dream  of  subject- 
ing the  dramas  of  Samuel  Shipman,  for  instance. 
The  weariness  increases  when  the  wiseacres  deduce 
from  the  results  that  the  public  does  not  want  to 
see  Shakspere  and  Ibsen. 


VI 
BITTER   MEMORIES 

THEATRICAL  managers  to  the  contrary  not- 
withstanding, the  hardy  and  tireless  scouts 
who  do  reconnaissance  work  at  first  nights  for  the 
purpose  of  reporting  back  to  the  main  body  of  the 
theater-going  public  are  usually  reviled  in  the 
morning  mail,  not  for  their  captiousness,  but 
rather  for  their  too  genial  tolerance,  their  too 
rosy  spectacles.  It  is  preposterous  propaganda 
which  suggests  that  these  good  scouts  are  a  sour- 
visaged  lot,  who  maintain  a  ghoulish  (or  at  best 
an  impassive)  death-watch  over  all  the  new  plays 
that  come  to  town.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  they  are 
the  incorrigibly  hopeful  part  of  every  first  audi- 
ence, pathetically  eager  to  believe  that  something 
fine  and  memorable  is  about  to  be  discovered  in 
the  next  act. 

One  of  the  most  distinguished,  gracious,  and 
charming  of  their  number  has  been  pictured  by  an 

impertinent  young  cartoonist  as  standing  forlorn 

96 


BITTER  MEMORIES  97 

in  a  festive  foyer  and  murmuring:  "I  'm  afraid 
it's  a  hit  I"  But  the  fellow  was  just  spoofing. 
Unbridled  enthusiasm,  incredible  elasticity,  and 
tumultuous  overpraise  are  the  distinguishing 
marks  of  the  whole  platoon.  The  dramatic  critics 
of  New  York,  ranging,  as  they  do,  from  the  late 
twenties  to  the  early  eighties  and  extraordinarily 
varied  in  their  origins,  education,  intelligence,  and 
personal  beauty,  are  alike  in  one  respect.  They 
are  all  be-trousered  Pollyannas. 

The  Pollyanna  note  can  be  traced  here  and 
there  to  timidity  or  indolence,  with  an  occasional 
faint  aroma  of  corruption,  but  for  the  most  part 
the  explanation  is  simpler  and  less  discreditable. 
If  your  professional  playgoer  seems  to  think  that 
a  fair  farce  is  good  and  a  good  melodrama  superb, 
it  is  probably  because  only  he  knows  how  bad  a 
play  can  be.  He  grows  delirious  about  the  best 
in  the  theater  because  he  alone  knows  the  worst. 

A  protesting  note  in  the  morning  mail,  so  fre- 
quent that  it  is  almost  a  form  letter,  is  wont  to 
read  as  follows: 


How  could  you  have  said  that  "The  Yellow  Stenog- 
rapher" was  a  pretty  good  comedy?  I  went  last  night, 
after  reading  your  notice,  and  thought  it  the  worst  show 
I  had  ever  seen. 


98  SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

To  which  one  of  two  replies  naturally  springs 
to  mind,  either  "Ah,  then,  you  never  saw  'The 
Phantom  Legion*"  or  "Why,  you  lucky  stiff!'* 
After  all,  the  playgoer  who  bides  his  time  and, 
on  the  recommendation  of  the  neighbors  and  the 
faintly  remembered  newspaper  accounts,  goes  only 
to  a  dozen  of  the  best  things  given  in  the  course  of 
a  season,  is  inevitably  more  exacting  and  more 
critical  than  the  chronic  first-nighter,  whose  every 
play  is  a  pig  in  a  poke.  No  one  could  help  enjoy- 
ing "The  Dover  Road,"  but  they  enjoy  it  most 
who  remember  "The  Survival  of  the  Fittest." 
Considered  all  alone^  "Jane  Clegg,"  the  Ervine 
comedy  at  the  Garrick,  seemed  a  creditable 
achievement.  Compared  with  some  of  the  other 
plays  about  unfaithful  husbands  which  the  same 
year  witnessed,  it  seemed  a  breath-taking  master- 
piece. 

In  the  spring  of  the  year,  when  it  is  customary 
for  the  dramatic  pages  to  break  out  in  a  rash  of 
summaries  of  the  season,  with  solemnly  compiled 
lists  of  the  Ten  Best  Plays  of  the  Year,  it  might 
be  more  profitable  to  pause  and  consider  what 
have  been  the  Ten  Worst  Plays.  By  reason  of 
themselves,  or  their  performance,  or  both,  I  se- 
lected these  for  the  season  of  1919-20: 


BITTER  MEMORIES  99 

''Katy's  Kisses." 

The  Poe  playlets. 

"Polypheme." 

"First  Is  Last." 

'The  Phantom  Legion." 

"The  Red  Dawn." 

"The  Unknown  Woman." 

"Three  's  a  Crowd." 

"George  Washington." 

"The  Blue  Flame." 

It  was,  as  I  look  back  on  it,  a  fair  list,  although 
it  is  possible  that  a  plebiscite  would  have  substi- 
tuted "Carnival"  or  "Curiosity"  or  "Where 's 
Your  Wife*?"  But,  you  argue,  you  never  even 
heard  of  most  of  these.  Which  only  goes  to  show 
how  little  you  realize  why  the  boiling-point  of 
the  dramatic  critic's  enthusiasm  is  so  low. 

Take  those  Poe  playlets,  for  instance.  They 
were  given  for  a  run  of  one  performance  at  the 
Little  Theater.  There  were  two  of  them.  The 
first,  called  "Bon  Bon,"  consisted  largely  of  clas- 
sical recitative,  with  the  tedium  relieved  by  quaint 
mispronunciations.  The  other  was  called 
"Lenore" — carefully  pronounced  Leonore.  The 
title  evidently  referred  to  Poe's  girl-wife,  for  that 
is  what  she  was  called  on  this  occasion.    The  ris- 


loo        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

ing  curtain  disclosed  the  Poes  standing  mid-stage 
somewhat  in  the  postures  associated  with  clothing 
dummies. 

PoE  [dismally].  "Blackwood's"  has  refused  "The 
Gold-bug." 

'Le'soke  [in  ecstasy].  Never  mind,  Edgar.  I  love  thee 
and  some  day  thou  wilt  be  recognized  as  a  great  poet. 
Meanwhile,  couldst  thou  not  cheer  my  grief  and  suffering 
by  reciting  some  of  thy  beautiful  songs? 

PoE  [brightening  visibly].  How  would  you  like  to 
hear  "The  Bells"? 

Lenore  [happily].  Yes,  yes,  dear  Edgar,  recite  "The 
Bells." 

After  this  much  introduction,  which  is  set  down 
by  a  faulty  memory  and  pretends  to  give  only  the 
general  impression  of  the  text,  Poe  recited.  The 
effort  surpassed  anything  of  its  kind  ever  heard 
upon  a  high  school  platform.  The  very  word 
"tintinabulation"  became  an  oration  in  itself — 
an  oration  with  gestures.  Then  Mrs.  Poe  died. 
The  audience  was  not  taken  by  surprise.  It  was 
not  feeling  any  too  well,  either.  A  final  scene, 
given  after  some  portion  of  the  house  had  de- 
parted with  a  bold  pretense  of  thinking  it  all  over, 
revealed  Poe  in  moonlit  solitude,  reciting — 
you  've  guessed  it — "The  Raven."  That  melan- 
choly creature  was  discovered  atop  the  bust,  where 
a  shirt-sleeved  arm  could  occasionally  be  descried 


BITTER  MEMORIES  loi 

manipulating  it.  The  croak  of  "Nevermore," 
however,  seemed  to  come  from  beneath  the  stage 
and  seemed  less  the  utterance  of  a  prophetic  bird 
than  the  protest  of  the  proverbially  audible  Bull 
of  Bashan. 

American  audiences  are  never  violent  and  sel- 
dom even  decently  resentful,  like  those  that  boo 
and  whistle  in  London  and  Paris  when  their 
sensibilities  are  outraged.  This  one  was  unusually 
meek  and  mild.  Of  the  fifty  persons  present 
nearly  all  stayed  to  the  end  and  then  left  quietly 
— even  the  old  gentleman  who  had  sat  through- 
out with  his  head  bowed  on  the  seat-back  in  front 
of  him.  Perhaps,  in  this  connection,  it  should 
be  further  explained  that  the  two  plays,  together 
with  the  long  intermission  that  separated  them, 
lasted  less  than  an  hour. 

Or  consider  "Pol5'pheme."  This  metrical 
French  version  of  the  Cyclops  legend  was  pre- 
sented at  the  Lenox  Theater  by  Carlo  Liten  and 
Yvonne  Garrick.  A  sparse  audience  waited  until 
nine  o'clock,  when  a  well-nourished  and  en- 
thusiastic Frenchman  came  before  the  curtain  and 
gave  vent  to  a  half-hour  causerie  on  the  life  of 
Albert  Semain,  the  previously  obscure  author  of 
"Polypheme.    He  told  how  he  felt  when  he  first 


102        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

met  Semain,  how  Semain  felt  next,  how  Semain 
felt  when  he  was  n't  elected  to  the  Academy,  how 
he  would  have  felt  if  he  had  been,  etc. 

Then  the  play  began,  revealing  the  chubby 
and  winsome  Mademoiselle  Garrick,  clad  in  a  pas- 
toral and  wreathed  bit  of  white  muslin,  and 
Monsieur  Liten  (who  is  somewhat  of  Walter 
Hampden's  proportions),  dressed  in  a  simple,  un- 
pretentious loin-cloth.  The  play  lasted  a  little 
more  than  half  an  hour.  The  abandon  of  its  per- 
formance was  somewhat  restricted  by  the  size  of 
the  Lenox  stage,  which  made  it  difficult  for  Poly- 
pheme  to  leap  about  much  or  even  to  gesture  pas- 
sionately without  uprooting  the  trees  and  gen- 
erally agitating  the  landscape. 

The  big  moment  came  when  the  sea  giant  dis- 
covered the  girl  and  a  shepherd  boy  (who  wore 
an  expensive  fur  rug)  lying  together  on  a  mossy 
bank,  a  sweetly  Arcadian  picture.  Behind  them 
Folypheme  made  moan.  His  distress  could  be 
heard  for  blocks,  but  not,  apparently,  by  the  bliss- 
ful causes  thereof.  It  is  true  that  every  now  and 
again  the  girl  would  sit  up  and  murmur  "Hark, 
hark  I"  or  something  French  to  that  effect,  but  al- 
ways her  shepherd  lover  would  say:  " 'T  is 
naught,  my  sweet,"  and  the  mutual  endearments 


BITTER  MEMORIES  103 

would  be  resumed.  Finally  the  boy  departed 
(presumably  to  tend  his  flocks)  and  the  despon- 
dent Folypheme  withdrew  to  the  wings,  put  out 
his  one  eye,  roared  with  pain,  came  back,  made 
gestures  of  love  and  despair  over  the  prostrate 
girl  (who  had  dropped  down  on  another  bank 
for  quarante  winks),  and  walked  off  into  the 
ocean.  All  this  was  accompanied  by  harp  strains 
from  the  wings.  It  seems  incredible  now,  but 
unless  memory  has  played  us  false  the  music  se- 
lected was  Handel's  "Largo." 

Another  play  followed.  Your  correspondent 
will  say  nothing  about  it.  He  did  not  see  it. 
He  had  withdrawn  to  the  sidewalk,  ostensibly  for 
a  smoke,  and  once  outside  had  fled  into  the  night. 

The  accounts  of  these  two  premieres  may  sug- 
gest what  hazards  the  scouts  encounter  in  your 
service.  Scouts^  The  figure  is  inadequate.  The 
dramatic  critics  are  like  the  slaves  of  old  who,  in 
the  brave  days  when  everybody  dressed  as  though 
for  a  Maxfield  Parrish  drawing  and  secret  poison 
was  likely  to  be  discovered  in  the  most  innocent 
and  succulent  dish,  were  employed  to  taste  those 
dishes  first.  If  they  lived,  the  masters  then  sat 
down  to  the  feast.  If  they  died,  it  did  n't  matter, 
matter,  matter. 


VII 
THE  TERRIBLE  TRANSLATION 

ANY  peaceful,  unoffending  playgoer  who 
folds  himself  seized  by  some  daily  or  weekly 
and  sent  off  to  the  theater  with  instructions  to 
review  a  play  can  escape  unobserved  if  he  will 
follow  a  few  simple  rules  of  conduct.  If,  for  in- 
stance, the  piece  deals  with  the  upper  ten,  he  need 
only  say  that  the  society  folk  on  the  stage  seemed 
more  like  longshoremen  and  washladies  out  on  a 
clam-bake.  If  the  play  be  an  imported  one,  he 
can  shake  his  head  sadly  over  the  sorry  contrast 
between  the  pitiable  American  production  and  the 
performance  of  the  same  play  given  the  preced- 
ing April  at  the  Kleines  Kunsttheater  in  Prague. 
He  may  not  have  seen  that  original  performance, 
but  neither  will  any  of  his  readers,  and  so  there 
will  be  no  argument.  And  if  the  piece  is  a  trans- 
lation from  the  French,  he  himself  need  know 
no  more  than  just  enough  French  to  keep  the 
harber  from  putting  brilliantine  on  his  hair  in 

order  to  shudder  fastidiously  over  the  deplorable 

104 


THE  TERRIBLE  TRANSLATION    105 

translation.  For  in  the  cases  of  nineteen  out  of 
twenty  French  plays  produced  in  New  York  in  a 
single  season,  he  will  be  standing  on  indisputable 
ground. 

The  translators  usually  engaged  by  American 
producers  for  such  work  are  either  men  who  can- 
not read  French  or  who  cannot  write  English, 
They  achieve  either  a  weird  jargon  that  is  half 
Harlem  and  half  Montparnasse  or  they  turn  all 
the  speeches  into  an  Ollendorff  idiom  the  like 
of  which  never  found  voice  on  land  or  sea.  The 
heroines  of  such  hybrids  are  given  either  to  re- 
marks like  this:  "Cheese  it !  Voila  le  policeman !" 
or  to  remarks  like  this :  "Is  it  not  that  it  is  neces- 
sary that  the  aunt  of  my  friend  assist'?"  My  own 
discomforts  at  such  productions  have  ranged  all 
the  way  from  the  paltry  jingles  into  which  Gran- 
ville Barker  turned  the  lovely  verse  of  Guitry's 
"Deburau"  to  the  quaint  adaptation  of  "Les 
Noces  d'Argent,"  which  was  credited  at  the  time 
to  Grace  George.  In  it  one  important  scene  re- 
volved around  a  coveted  sideboard,  which,  be- 
cause it  had  been  referred  to  in  the  French  text 
as  a  commode^  was  docilely  and  grotesquely  called 
a  commode  in  West  Forty-eighth  Street. 

Against  such  absurdities,  it  is  well,  probably, 


io6         SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

that  we  should  all  mutiny  from  time  to  time,  but 
it  must  be  admitted  that  the  Broadwayites  who 
turn  French  plays  into  American  are  adroit, 
facile,  brilliant  philologists  compared  with  the 
translators  who  turn  English  plays  into  French 
or  who  flavor  a  Parisian  text  with  an  occasional 
dizzy  flight  into  English.  There  have  been,  of 
course,  several  classic  disasters  achieved  in  the 
process,  including  the  feat  of  the  translator  who 
pondered  over  the  phrase,  "so  woebegone,"  in 
"Henry  IV"  and  finally  wrote,  "Ainsi^  douleur^ 
vdfen^''  and  the  version  of  Gibber's  "Love's  Last 
Shift,"  which  appeared  on  the  boulevards  under 
the  title,  "La  Derniere  Chemise  de  1' Amour." 

But  to  suggest  that  such  slightly  imperfect  mas- 
tery of  English  is  still  characteristic  of  the  French 
author,  let  me  call  attention  to  the  text  of  "My 
Love — Mon  Amour,"  a  neat  comedy  by  the  cele- 
brated Tristan  Bernard,  which  appeared  in  Paris 
early  in  1922.  In  it  the  young  heiress,  around 
whom  the  four  acts  turned  and  twisted,  was  dis- 
covered giving  English  lessons  in  a  remote  French 
village  on  the  coast.  She  was  in  the  midst  of  one 
of  these  when  along  came  an  English  tourist,  and 
the  glibness  with  which  she  was  able  to  converse 
with  him  quite  graveled  the  listening  French.    I 


THE  TERRIBLE  TRANSLATION    107 

quote  their  very  words  as  they  appeared  in  the 
"L'lllustration"  text. 

Said  the  Englishman:  ''Excuse  me.  I  can't 
speak  French.  I  want  ask  for  the  way  to  Villers- 
Bocage?  I  shall  return  to  the  inn  of  Villers- 
Bocage  because  I  leaved  my  spectacles  in  my 
room.  Do  you  believe  if  I  am  able  to  buy  spec- 
tacles in  this  city^"  To  which  the  fair  Jeanne 
replied,  in  English  every  bit  as  good  as  his,  "It 
is  very  easy,  sir.  You  can  find  spectacles  in  the 
Station  Street  near."  To  which,  naturally  enough, 
he  made  answer:  'Thank's,  miss.  Good  bye  sir! 
Very  obliged."  This  was  all  so  charming  that 
one  was  quite  delighted  when,  a  little  later,  the 
Englishman  reappeared  and  said :  "I  did  not  find 
any  spectacles  in  the  shop  that  you  indicate  me. 
Is  there  another  optician  in  Avranches*?"  "Oh, 
sir,"  replied  one  of  the  young  students  of  Eng- 
lish, "I  think  there  is  any  other."  The  English- 
man seemed  doubtful.  'There  are  no  many  com- 
modities in  Avranches,"  he  said.  "It  is  really  a 
little  hote."  That,  of  course,  was  absurd.  The 
Frenchman  replied  warmly:  "Avranches,  sir,  is 
the  most  jolly  town  of  the  coast.  It 's  an  ideal 
place,  and  all  the  happiness  of  the  world  is  in 
Avranches  I"     Which  elicited  from  the  English- 


io8        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

man  this  parting  shot:  "I  am  going  to  visit  it 
again  but  until  now  I  am  not  at  all  of  your 
advice." 

And  so  on  and  so  on.  But  if  you  really  want 
to  read  English  as  she  is  wrote  in  the  French  the- 
ater, consider  this  lovely  fragment  which  came  to 
me  in  a  circular  from  the  little  Treteau  Fortuny, 
where  they  were  playing  "Mrs.  Warren's  Profes- 
sion" when  I  was  passing  through  Paris  not  long 
ago: 

LADY  AND  GENTLEMAN 

We  have  learned  with  great  pleasure  your  arrival  in 
Paris  and  we  welcome  you. 

We  know  that  you  are  of  that  intellectual  foreign  elite 
that  is,  to  be  found  in  that  worldly  circle  to  which  you 
belong  so  you  will  frequent  the  "TRETEAU 
FORTUNY"  a  new  theatre  of  Art  where  the  literary 
works  of  the  whole  world  are  performed. 

We  have  decided  to  introduce  into  France  Bernard 
Shaw  the  great  Irish  and  dramatic  author  and  we  are 
sure  that  you  will  approve  our  idea. 

We  know  that  the  new  and  audacious  attempts  have 
your  approbation  and  that  our  realisations  will  have  all 
your  favor. 

You  will  mix  up  with  the  fashionable  "Tout  Paris" 
and  complete  it,  you  will  clap  the  great  Suzanne  Despres 
and  the  splendid  Troap  of  the  "Treteau  Fortuny"  in  the 
"Profession  de  Madame  Warren." 

Bernard  Shaw's  fine  play  and  you  will  contribute  to 
our  success  by  your  presence. 


..JL' 


THE  TERRIBLE  TRANSLATION    109 

We  know  that  you  will  wish  to  be  among  the  first 
who  interest  themselves  in  forward  literary  movement. 

Incidentally,  the  folder  from  which  the  fore- 
going gem  was  culled  contained  on  its  face  the 
following  lure:  "On  showing  this  ticket  to  the 
Control,  the  best  seats  will  be  given  you  without 
any  increase  in  price,"  which  handsome  offer  does 
suggest  that  the  French,  while  still  a  little  in- 
different to  the  niceties  of  the  English  language, 
have  picked  up  a  notion  or  two  of  American  busi- 
ness methods. 


VIII 
ANOTHER  FOREIGN  AUTHOR 

THERE  is  a  whole  department  of  American 
dramatic  criticism,  as  spoken  in  the  uni- 
versities and  as  written  in  the  sedater  journals, 
which  is  given  over  to  a  continuous  lament  over 
the  present-day  neglect  of  Shakspere.  The  tone 
of  this  lament  is  querulous,  as  though  the  imper- 
fections of  the  contemporary  Shaksperian  per- 
formances and  the  uncertainty  of  Shaksperian 
production  as  a  commercial  investment  were  di- 
rectly traceable  either  to  an  incorrigible  triviality 
in  the  American  theater  or  to  a  certain  essential 
baseness  in  its  players  and  its  playgoers.  This 
is  nonsense.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  everything  of 
courage  and  invention  and  aspiration  that  has 
been  contributed  to  the  English-speaking  theater 
in  the  last  twenty-five  years  has  tended  to  lead 
the  players  and  their  public  away  from  Shakspere. 
It  is  the  best  and  not  the  worst  in  that  theater 
which  has  come  between  him  and  the  new  play- 
goers of  the  twentieth  century.     Now,  as  never 

no 


ANOTHER  FOREIGN  AUTHOR  in 

before,  the  difficulties  which  beset  him  in  the 
theater  are  genuine  and  deep-rooted.  In  our  time 
something  has  happened  which  has  lent  a  real 
meaning  to  the  phrase  of  a  nonchalant  Broad- 
wayite  who  recently  spoke  of  Shakspere  as  "an- 
other foreign  author." 

To  arrive  at  this  not  necessarily  dispiriting  con- 
clusion, you  turn  your  attention  not  merely  to 
Shakspere  but  to  the  audience  itself.  This  has 
no  reference,  of  course,  to  the  precious  crew  which 
fills  half  the  theater  on  nearly  every  New  York 
first  night  under  the  pleasant  delusion  that  it  rep- 
resents America,  and  can  say  thumbs  up  or  down 
on  each  new  play  that  passes  by.  Nor  does  it 
refer  to  the  good  people  scattered  over  the  country 
who  go  to  the  play  once  every  three  years.  Leave 
out  of  consideration  such  special  audiences,  wist- 
fully hungry  for  culture,  as  the  roving  outdoor 
companies  may  assemble  from  the  summer  schools 
and  the  multitudinous  Chautauquas.  Leave  out 
of  consideration  all  those  who  take  their  Shaks- 
pere scrupulously,  attending  because  they  think 
they  ought,  and  not  for  the  beauty  and  splendor 
and  fun  there  is  in  him.  Take,  rather,  the  great 
body  of  playgoers  that  are  neither  precious  nor 
unappreciative ;  folks  who  read  Edna  Ferber  and 


112        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

Zona  Gale,  who  admire  Margaret  Anglin  and  are 
not  to  be  sneezed  at ;  folks  who  attend  the  theater 
often  enough  to  have  some  mental  habit  of  play- 
going,  who  have  had  their  taste  in  drama  formed 
in  our  theater  during  the  last  twenty-five  years, 
and  more  particularly  during  the  present  century. 
What  of  them?  For  it  is  to  them  we  must  look 
if  Shakspere  is  to  flourish  on  the  stage — and  not 
merely,  to  his  horror,  in  the  library — in  this,  the 
fourth  century  since  his  death. 

And  between  these  people  and  his  plays  there 
has  come  a  great  gap,  a  breach  that  has  widened 
rapidly  in  the  last  fifteen  years.  Merely  to  say 
that  he  has  been  dead  three  centuries  is  inade- 
quately to  express  the  idea.  He  had  been  dead 
nearly  that  long  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago;  since 
then  the  span  has  doubled,  trebled.  Since  then 
has  come  what  may  be  called  the  modern  drama, 
a  complete,  far-reaching  revolution  in  dramatic 
art,  the  taking  up  of  a  new  form  and  a  new  man- 
ner, the  setting  up  of  a  new  aim  and  a  new  ideal. 
The  years  in  the  theater  since  1890  are  long  just 
as  the  nineteenth  century  was  long  in  the  history 
of  civilization,  change,  achievement — far  longer, 
the  new  historians  relish  pointing  out,  than  the 
paleolithic  age,  say,  which  in  mere  time  extended 


ANOTHER  FOREIGN  AUTHOR     113 

rather  longer  than  a  hundred  years.  How  radical 
has  been  this  change  you  realize  better  when  you 
consider  that  plays  written  in  the  sixties  and 
seventies  are  more  nearly  contemporary  with 
Shakspere  than  "The  Madras  House,"  that  in- 
complete work  of  genius  which  is  more  exasperat- 
ingly  characteristic  of  its  time  than  any  play  writ- 
ten in  our  day  in  the  English  language.  And  the 
best  plays  of  to-day  differ  from  Shakspere  as 
sharply  as  his  own  differed  from  the  deathless 
tragedies  which  were  written  on  the  shores  of  the 
iiEgean  when  all  the  world  was  young. 

Inevitably  the  presentation  of  poetic  drama  in 
the  age  of  the  naturalistic  play  encounters  diffi- 
culties akin  to  those  which  beset  acting  in  the  old 
Academy  of  Music  in  Philadelphia.  Playgoers 
there  may  remember  that  in  the  days  when  a  loose 
little  band  of  stars  was  valiantly  and  somewhat 
melodramatically  fighting  the  theatrical  syndi- 
cate, that  spacious  barn  was  the  only  auditorium 
open  to  them.  The  ordinarily  dimensioned  stage 
properties  would  snuggle  to  the  rear  of  the  im- 
mense stage,  and  then  between  the  place  where 
castle  or  garden  stopped  and  the  place  where  the 
orchestra  began  there  intervened  a  yawning  apron, 
a  disheartening  expanse  across  which  the  players 


114        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

— in  the  argot  of  their  profession — ^had  to  "put" 
the  play.  Mr.  Hackett  yelled  through  "The 
Crisis."  Miss  Crosman  must  needs  roar  as  Rosa- 
lind^ and  the  great  Mrs.  Fiske — fancy  it — Mrs. 
Fiske  was  obliged  to  reveal  previously  unsus- 
pected lung  power.  This  difficulty  was  not  in- 
superable. It  could  be  overcome,  but  the  gap  was 
there.  And  so  it  is  now  in  the  relations  between 
Shakspere  and  a  present-day  audience  in  our  coun- 
try. An  unmistakable,  though  not  necessarily 
permanent,  separation  has  taken  place  that  simply 
must  be  reckoned  with  in  terms  of  illusion  and 
response.  The  gap  is  not  insuperable,  but  it  is 
there.  It  is  a  commonplace  of  dramatic  criticism 
that  the  actor  of  our  time  has  not  been  trained  to 
give  Shakspere.  Any  dramatic  critic  over  the 
age  of  three  can  say  that,  and,  in  fact,  does  say 
it  whenever  he  is  out  of  copy.  What  is  equally 
true,  and  rather  more  a  matter  of  concern,  is  that 
the  audience  has  not  been  trained  to  take 
Shakspere. 

The  audiences  have  been  trained  away  from 
Shakspere,  not  by  the  machinations  of  base  man- 
agers impressed  with  evidence  more  recent  than 
Chatterton's  old  cry  that  "Shakspere  spells  ruin," 
but  by  the  finest  and  most  brilliant  work  done  in 


ANOTHER  FOREIGN  AUTHOR     115: 

the  modern  theater.  They  have  been  trained  away 
by  the  playwrights,  producers,  and  players  of  the 
naturalistic  school,  the  men  and  women  who  try 
to  represent  their  own  day  realistically,  to  put  on 
the  stage  an  action  that  has  the  form  and  color 
and  sound,  the  authentic  gesture  and  accent,  of 
every-day  life.  Rebellion  has  reared  its  head  in 
Germany.  Atypical  playwrights  have  spoken  elo- 
quently there  and  in  Ireland  and  in  Belgium,  but 
the  naturalistic  school  is  none  the  less  the  deter- 
mining force  in  the  theater  to-day.  It  may  not 
be  to-morrow,  but  that  is  another  story. 

The  naturalistic  school  works  quietly  and  with 
the  fewest  possible  trappings.  It  speaks  prose, 
and  there  is  no  poetry  in  it.  It  is  the  irony  of 
fate  that  the  Shakspere  tercentenary  should  have 
come  around  in  a  generation  that  could  regard 
"The  Old  Wives'  Tale"  as  its  greatest  English 
novel  and  in  a  year  whereof  the  best  poetry  was 
much  too  much  like  the  "Spoon  River  An- 
thology." The  naturalistic  school  is  typified  in 
its  conventions — chiefly  the  fourth-wall  conven- 
tion— those  methods  of  procedure  by  which  a  pro- 
duced play  is  conditioned,  the  terms  of  tacit  agree- 
ment between  playwright  and  playgoer  which  are 
in  his  mind  and  yours  before  ever  the  curtain  rises. 


ii6         SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

"Let 's  pretend,"  he  says  as  he  puts  pen  to  paper, 
and  "Let 's  pretend"  you  say  as  you  sidle  to  your 
seat.  That  is  always  the  agreement  between  you, 
but  the  terms  differ  in  different  generations.  Now 
you  go  into  the  theater  assenting  to  the  assump- 
tion that  the  fourth  wall  of  a  room  has  been  with- 
drawn and  that  you  are  but  an  eavesdropper, 
made  comfortable.  Unconsciously,  that  is  your 
habit.  Hence  all  the  occasion  for  bursts  of  dis- 
satisfaction with  the  photographic,  stenographic 
drama  of  the  day.  Hence  the  infinite  detail  of 
some  of  the  earlier  Belasco  realism,  with  its  sug- 
gestion that  all  he  needed  was  a  good,  big  moving- 
van.  Hence  the  quiet,  suppressed  playing  and 
all  the  subnormal  acting  that  sneaks  in  under  the 
fine  name  of  restraint.  Hence  the  actress  who  has 
occasionally  been  known  to  turn  her  back  to  the 
footlights  and  whisper  her  sentiments  to  the  grati- 
fied back-drop  in  the  fervor  of  her  devotion  to  the 
missing  fourth  wall  and  its  implicit  denial  of  the 
audience's  very  existence. 

And  in  all  this  there  is  no  place  for  Juliet  talk- 
ing to  the  moon  and  Hamlet  talking  into  space. 
There  is  no  place  for  the  majesty  of  blank  verse 
and  the  lavish  outpouring  of  sheer  word  music, 
no  place  for  pageantry  and  impassioned  mono- 


ANOTHER  FOREIGN  AUTHOR     117 

logue.  It  is  only  in  the  freemasonry  that  exists 
between  children  and  Barrie  that  Peter  Pan  can 
call  across  the  footlights.  The  aside,  like  the 
soliloquy  and  the  incidental  music,  is  gone.  It  is 
gone  not  because  it  broke  a  rule,  but  because  it 
broke  the  illusion. 

And  Shakspere  is  difficult  for  one  of  our  audi- 
ences because  if  you  would  go  along  with  him 
at  all  you  must  go  on  quite  different  terms.  It  is 
all  a  matter  of  the  audience's  habitual  predisposi- 
tion, and  there  has  never  been  a  time  since  the 
days  of  Burbage  and  the  old  Globe  Theater  when 
the  mental  habits — not  necessarily  bad  habits, 
mind  you — of  the  playgoer  offered  such  resistance 
to  Shakspere  as  they  do  to-day. 

All  this  is  no  reflection  of  scholastic  criticism. 
The  fourth-wall  convention  has  had  its  most 
potent  effect  on  those  who  have  never  heard  of  it; 
it  has  conditioned  the  illusion  even  for  the  most 
remote  and  most  naive,  the  son,  perhaps,  of  that 
splendid,  if  somewhat  disconcertingly  responsive, 
playgoer  who  assaulted  Arm  and  at  the  op'ry  house 
in  Denver  when  he  went  to  see  "Modjesky  ez 
Cameel."  The  theater-goers  of  Utica,  Akron, 
Des  Moines,  and  points  west  are  not  so  passion- 
ately devoted  to  the  great  Norwegian  that  they 


ii8         SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

cannot  see  what  a  good  fellow  our  Will  Shakspere 
was.  Nonsense.  Ibsen  has  never  had  any  direct 
influence  on  playgoers  in  English-speaking  coun- 
tries, but  the  great  pioneer  always  reaches  the 
lesser  fellows  of  his  craft.  Not  only  Shaw  and 
Galsworthy,  but  the  most  shameless  little  pot- 
boilers on  Broadway  write  their  pieces  under  cir- 
cumstances Ibsen  helped  mightily  to  create.  And 
thus  accustomed,  the  average  American  pay-as- 
you-enter  play-going  audience  now  goes  to  the 
theater  in  a  frame  of  mind  that  is  radically  dif- 
ferent because  Mr.  Ibsen  wrote.  It  is  that  frame 
of  mind  with  which  the  plays  of  Shakspere  must 
contend. 

So  ijiuch  for  the  audience.  What  of  the  actor? 
There  is  the  oft-repeated  lament  that  in  these 
days  there  are  no  actors  to  play  Shakspere  even 
if  your  thrifty  producers  could  be  persuaded  to 
give  his  plays  and  the  public  nourished  a  secret 
passion  to  see  them  on  the  stage.  But  it  is  really 
understating  the  case  to  say  that  the  twentieth 
century  actor  of  the  English-speaking  stage  has 
not  been  trained  to  play  Shakspere  when  the 
whole  point  is  that  he  has  been  trained  not  to. 
By  the  stuff  of  which  the  present-day  plays  are 
made,  by  the  implicit  directions  of  the  lines  he 


ANOTHER  FOREIGN  AUTHOR     119 

speaks,  by  the  atmosphere  the  best  of  the  pro- 
ducers give  to  the  plays  they  stage,  by  the  stand- 
ards that  reputations  set,  and  by  your  own  ap- 
plause and  sympathy,  he  is  trained  to  prose  and 
to  soft  speech  and  to  a  quiet,  homely,  every-day 
naturalness  that  would  ill  comport  with  the 
superb  verse,  the  magnificent  declamations,  the 
splendid  trappings  of  the  plays  of  Shakspere. 

"The  eavesdropping  convention,"  gloomily  ob- 
serves Henry  Arthur  Jones,  "is  developing  a 
school  of  admirable  realistic  actors,  who  can 
render  with  extreme  nicety  all  those  subtleties  of 
the  drawing-room  and  the  street  which  are  scarcely 
worth  rendering." 

It  seems  probable  that  in  the  French  Revolu- 
tion many  a  simple,  kindly,  generous,  socially- 
minded  aristocrat  perished  on  the  guillotine.  Cer- 
tainly when  the  men  of  the  theater  rose  against 
all  the  hollow  and  spurious  romance  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  they  made  it  hard  thereafter  for 
true  romance  to  get  a  hearing.  They  have  left  the 
theater  one-sided,  one-toned,  limited,  a  little 
monotonous,  and  it  is  only  a  partial  consolation 
to  remember  that  while  we  see  little  now  of 
Booth's  Shaksperian  repertoire,  we  see  nothing 
at  all  of  his  "Richelieu."    In  the  same  way  some- 


120        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

thing  of  eloquence  was  killed  in  the  war  on 
grandiloquence  and  tall  talking.  Certainly  when 
the  swaggering,  ranting  actor,  with  all  his  sound 
and  fury,  went  slinking  out,  there  was  discour- 
aged S(Mnething  of  the  personal  magnificence,  the 
individual  grandeur  which  is  needed  to  fill  the 
amaranthine  robes  of  Othello  and  make  the  Thane 
of  Glamis  live. 

You  see,  all  the  forces  of  the  modern  stage  have 
been  mercilessly  dedicated  to  the  repression  of  the 
actor.  A  will  tell  you — he  will  even  write  an 
essay  about  it  from  time  to  time — that  this  is  the 
age  of  the  great  playwright  and,  therefore,  in  the 
cycle  in  which  such  forces  move,  no  age  for  the 
great  player.  B — "wretched,  meritorious  B" — 
will  prove  to  you  that  the  incandescent  lamp  has 
done  it  all,  that  with  electricity  it  is  natural  so 
to  diffuse  the  light  that  the  spot-light  no  longer 
hallows  a  single  player  at  the  expense  of  his  fel- 
lows. It  was  an  incorrigible  greenroom  wag  who 
sent  to  another  American  star  a  marked  wooden 
fragment  of  the  now  dismantled  Wallack's  so  that 
he  might  forever  keep  and  indulge  his  passion  for 
the  center  of  the  stage.  But,  after  all,  not  many 
of  our  players  do;  there  are  few  left  concerning 
whom  this  exquisite  humor  would  have  any  point. 


ANOTHER  FOREIGN  AUTHOR     121 

C  comments  on  A  and  B  by  accounting  for  every- 
thing in  the  terms  of  the  collapse  of  repertory. 
But  they  are  all  trying  to  explain  the  same  thing, 
the  dwindling  of  the  player's  stature,  the  new  un- 
pretentiousness  which,  for  the  great  heroic  roles, 
ill  transmits  the  glory  that  was  Rehan  and  the 
grandeur  that  was  Booth.  All  this  was  in  the 
mind  of  the  writer  in  "The  London  Times"  who, 
when  a  great  actress  made  her  exit  not  long  ago, 
said:  "You  feel  that  something  of  Shakspere's 
secret  died  with  Ada  Rehan." 

Of  the  fifteen  Shakesperian  plays  these  recent 
years  have  brought  to  town  there  were  only  two 
great  performances — Forbes-Robertson's  Hamlet 
and  John  Barrymore's  Gloster — and  but  three  ex- 
amples of  Shakspere  as  a  producer's  contribution, 
leading  off  with  the  Barker  production  of  "Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream,"  an  eccentric  presenta- 
tion marked  by  the  bewildering  speed  with  which 
the  players  poured  forth  the  incredibly  abundant 
music  of  the  text. 

The  simple  folk  out  front,  groundlings  and 
gentry  alike,  said  it  was  lovely  and  all  that,  but 
that  they  could  n't  understand  a  word  that  was 
said.  "Gabbling"  was  the  term  used  by  the  testier 
London  reviewers  when  the  same  experiment  was 


122         SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

tried  on  them,  and  Brother  Barker,  who  had  al- 
ready raised  his  lament  on  the  abandoned  stand- 
ard of  beauty  in  the  English  language,  on  the 
falling  off  in  the  musical  utterance  of  verse,  re- 
sponded chidingly: 

'T  call  in  question  the  evidence  of  mere  police- 
men critics.  I  question  a  little  their  expertness 
of  hearing,  a  little,  too,  their  quickness  of  under- 
standing Elizabethan  English  not  at  its  easiest" 
— in  other  words,  the  loveliest  Elizabethan  poetry 
spoken  by  players  untrained  to  speak  it  for  the 
ears  of  men  and  women  untrained  to  hear  it. 

And  there  you  have  it — or  part  of  it.  It  is  this 
and  something  more.  Poetry  comes  strange  from 
lips  and  to  ears  attuned  to  the  most  matter-of- 
fact  prose.  "Yes,  I  know,  that  is  so."  The 
dramas  of  rhetoric,  fashioned  for  the  platform, 
adjust  themselves  but  awkwardly  to  the  picture- 
frame  stage  of  our  time.  "Very  true,  so  they  do." 
And  naturally  in  an  average  audience  of  to-day 
there  reappears  the  spiritual  descendant  of  one 
who  found  the  first  Lear  dull  ("he  's  for  a  jig  or 
a  tale  of  bawdry  or  he  sleeps"),  the  successor  to 
silly  Mr.  Pepys,  who  found  the  "Dream"  at  the 
King's  Theater  "the  most  insipid,  ridiculous  play" 
he  had  ever  seen. 


ANOTHER  FOREIGN  AUTHOR     123 

But  these  are  all  only  contributory  elements 
in  the  decline  of  Shakspere  in  terms  of  easy 
illusion,  the  spell  of  make-believe  a  great  play 
can  weave — and  must  weave — in  the  hearts  of 
those  to  whom  its  story  is  unfolded.  Every  audi- 
dence  in  the  history  of  the  theater,  from  the  Athe- 
nians, who  reveled  in  Euripides  at  the  Temple 
of  Dionysus,  the  mixed  crew  that  jostled  happily 
in  the  yard  at  the  first  theater  in  the  parish  of 
Shoreditch,  the  Londoners  who  sat  rapt  at  Drury 
Lane  before  the  at  least  archeologically  weird 
sisters  in  mittens,  ruffs,  and  red  stomachers  who 
hovered  over  Garrick's  caldron,  down  to  the  de- 
voted army  that  besieges  the  box-office  whenever 
the  great  Mr.  Cohan  writes  a  piece — all  have  gone 
to  the  play  eager  to  pretend,  hungry  for  reality, 
even  the  most  calloused  bringing  to  his  seat  rem- 
nants of  that  perfect  faith  the  child  gives  in  the 
nursery  to  the  stirring  story  of  Cinderella  or 
Snow-white,  to  the  pathetic  incident  of  Mother 
Hubbard.  They  must  recognize  humanity  in  the 
story  unfolded  on  the  stage.  They  want  to  weep 
with  the  tragedy,  laugh  with  the  comedy,  glow 
with  the  romance.  They  want  to  believe;  they 
want  to  enjoy  themselves  in  the  theater.  And  the 
cheapest  modem  play,  however  hollow  and  spuri- 


124        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

ous  at  heart,  has  at  least  the  outward  look  and 
sound  of  every-day  life  which  makes  easy  the 
pretense.  Every  development  in  the  modern  the- 
ater, not  only  in  the  drama,  but  in  the  structure 
of  the  buildings  and  the  mechanism  of  the  world 
behind  the  scenes,  gives  aid  to  the  will  and  power 
to  pretend.  The  imagination  is  subvened  in  the 
playhouse  to-day.  It  has  been  pampered  and 
Shakspere  is  a  strain  upon  it.  There  is  the  heart 
of  the  matter. 


sffl 


IX 


THE  CELEBRATED   DECLINE  OF  THE 
DRAMA 

THE  most  persistently  recurrent  phenomenon 
of  the  theater  is  the  old  playgoer  who  in- 
sists that  the  theater  is  in  a  state  of  decay.  Just 
as  George  Jean  Nathan,  of  "The  Smart  Set"  and 
Budapest,  is  wont  to  admire  any  play  produced 
at  a  spot  sufficiently  remote  in  geography  to 
satisfy  his  craving  for  mere  distance,  so  that  twin 
spirit  of  his,  the  late  William  Winter,  gave  over 
his  declining  years  to  a  fond  admiration  of  any 
play  produced  in  America  so  long  before  that  no 
one  could  argue  with  him  about  it.  Winter  is 
gone,  but  others  have  rushed  to  catch  up  the  torch 
as  it  fell  from  his  hands.  Indeed,  the  great  Pro- 
fessor Copeland  of  Harvard  tells  me  that  he  him- 
self is  the  only  old  man  extant  who  does  not  see 
a  subsidence  in  the  level  of  theatrical  perform- 
ance. 

Says    Brander    Matthews     of    Morningside 
125 


126        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

Heights,  in  his  wafer-thin  volume  of  essays  on 
acting : 

When  Colley  Cibber  asked  Congreve  why  he  did  not 
write  another  comedy  the  old  wit  retorted  promptly, 
"But  where  are  your  actors?"  And  Colley  Cibber  was 
one  of  a  group  of  actors  and  actresses  as  brilliant  and 
as  accomplished  as  ever  graced  the  stage  in  Great  Britain. 
Sir  Philip  Sidney  almost  wept  over  the  pitiful  condition 
of  the  English  drama,  just  before  Shakespeare  came  for- 
ward with  his  swift  succession  of  masterpieces.  If  we  go 
back  many  centuries  to  Greece,  we  find  Aristophanes 
lamenting  the  decay  of  dramatic  literature  as  evidenced 
in  the  plays  of  Euripides.  And  when  Thespis  first  started 
out  with  his  cart — the  earliest  recorded  attempt  of  any 
star-actor  to  go  on  the  road  with  his  own  company — 
we  may  be  certain  that  there  were  not  lacking  veteran 
playgoers  who  promptly  foresaw  the  speedy  decline  of 
the  drama. 

Yes,  and  when  George  Henry  Lewes,  who,  in 
addition  to  living  in  sin  with  George  Eliot,  wrote 
the  best  dramatic  criticism  which  appeared  in 
England  in  the  fifties  and  sixties  of  the  last  cen- 
tury, lamented  at  so  much  a  word  the  decay  of 
the  theater  since  his  youth,  he  was  looking  fondly 
back  to  the  very  day  when  Dickens  was  sketching 
into  "Nicholas  Nickleby"  the  hasty  but  still 
recognizable  portraits  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Curdle 
who,  in  the  thirties,  used  to  infiltrate  all  discus- 
sion of  the  theater  with  their  antiphonal  chant: 
*The  Drama  is  gone,  perfectly  gone." 


CELEBRATED  DECLINE  OF  DRAMA   127 

Even  so  comparatively  youthful  a  commenta- 
tor as  Arthur  Homblow,  editor  of  "The  Theatre 
Magazine,"  has  wound  up  his  fine,  fat,  two-vol- 
umed  history  of  the  American  stage  with  a  like 
note  of  melancholy — a  melancholy  he  is  able  to 
maintain  only  by  confining  himself  rigorously  to 
a  chronicle  of  acting,  and  pretending,  for  the  sake 
of  his  argument,  that  the  men  who  write  the  plays 
and  the  artists  who  adorn  the  stage  are  negligible 
factors  in  the  scheme  of  the  theater.  Only  by 
sedulously  forgetting  all  about  the  Eugene 
O'Neills  and  the  Robert  Edmond  Joneses  of  the 
present-day  theater  in  America  is  it  possible  to 
exercise  the  cherished  privilege  of  shedding  tears 
over  that  theater's  decline. 

It  is  a  sufficient  commentary  on  the  whole  mass 
of  elegiac  poppycock  that  if  a  publisher  were  to 
issue  an  honestly  compiled  volume  of  the  ten  best 
American  plays  he  would  have  to  take  ten  written 
in  the  twentieth  century.  Certainly  if  he  went 
back  into  the  mauve  dawn  before  1880,  he  would 
come  upon  pieces  now  interesting  only  as  relics. 
The  most  interesting  one  of  all  is  "Fashion,"  Mrs. 
Mowatt's  comedy  of  manners,  which  was  pre- 
sented to  an  astonished  New  York  in  1845.  It 
is  interesting  because  it  was  the  first  American  play 


128        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

written  by  a  woman,  because  it  struck  out  along^ 
the  path  which  the  American  playwrights  have 
followed  pretty  steadily  down  through  the  Hoyt 
and  Cohan  farces  to  that  happiest  example  of 
them  all,  "The  First  Year."  It  is  also  interest- 
ing because  it  was  the  first  American  play  to  leap 
the  Atlantic  to  London,  And  because  it  was  the 
first  to  express  clearly  that  abiding  conviction  of 
the  American  playwright;  viz.,  that  all  city- 
dwellers  reek  with  sin,  that  the  inhabitants  of 
towns  not  over  10,000  are  comparatively  virtuous 
and  that  any  one  who  lives  in  the  middle  of  a  ten- 
acre  lot  is  as  pure  as  the  driven  snow.  Indeed,  I 
am  sure  it  was  in  "Fashion"  that  the  scornful 
phrase  "that  city  chap"  made  its  first  appearance 
on  any  stage.  I  have  been  unable  to  discover 
at  what  point  in  its  history  it  acquired  the  addi- 
tional words:  "He  ain't  done  right  by  our  Nell." 
"Fashion"  was  first  presented  at  the  old  Park 
Theater  three  years  before  that  celebrated  play- 
house burned  to  the  ground.  The  comedy  laughs 
at  the  parvenu  Americans,  much  as  Martin 
Chuzzlewit  laughed  at  them.  A  Mrs.  Tiffanyy 
who  once  made  up  flashy  hats  and  caps  behind  a 
little  mahogany-colored  counter  in  Canal  Street 
and  whose  husband  began  his  fortune  as  a  ped- 


CELEBRATED  DECLINE  OF  DRAMA  129 

dler,  emerges  grandly  as  a  New  York  hostess  with 
a  jenny-says-quoi  about  her  and  with  some  really 
very  foreign  exotics  in  her  conservatory.  Her 
efforts  to  marry  her  daughter  to  an  ex-cook  and 
valet  posing  in  New  York  as  a  count  are  thwarted 
at  last,  partly  by  the  intervention  of  good,  old 
Adam  Trueman  from  Cattaraugus  County,  who 
utters  such  fine,  old,  Man  from  Home  sentiments 
that,  in  the  event  of  a  revival,  it  would  be  the 
least  William  Hodge  and  George  M.  Cohan  could 
do  to  attend  each  performance  and  applaud  him 
frantically.  Even  the  sight  of  the  darky  footman 
in  flaming  livery  afflicts  him.  "To  make  men 
wear  the  badge  of  servitude  in  a  free  land — that 's 
the  fashion,  is  it?"  You  should  hear  him  describe 
the  despoiler  of  his  daughter.  "My  heart  misgave 
me  the  instant  I  laid  eyes  upon  him — for  he  was 
a  city  chap,  and  not  overfond  of  the  truth."  And 
you  should  hear  his  closing  speech : 

When  justice  is  found  only  among  lawyers — health 
among  physicians — and  patriotism  among  politicians, 
then  may  you  say  that  there  is  no  nobility  where  there 
are  not  titles!  But  we  have  Kings,  Princes,  and  Nobles 
in  abundance — of  Nature's  stamp,  if  not  of  Fashion's 
— we  have  honest  men,  warm  hearted  and  brave,  and  we 
have  women — gentle,  fair,  and  true — to  whom  no  title 
could  add  nobility. 


130        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

This  was  the  role  which  in  later  productions 
E.  L.  Davenport  was  to  play  both  here  and 
abroad,  while  Gertrude^  the  walking  lady  heroine, 
was  occasionally  assumed,  with  reluctance  and 
disdain,  by  Mrs.  Mowatt  herself.  For  shortly  after 
the  first  performance  of  the  play  she  went  on  the 
stage  and  won  there  her  greatest  celebrity.  No 
doubt  it  was  partly  because  of  this  circumstance 
that  "Fashion"  found  a  hearing  in  all  the  prin- 
cipal cities  of  the  country,  as  well  as  in  London, 
where  she  was  hailed  as  "the  most  interesting  of 
young  tragedians,  the  most  ladylike  of  genteel 
comedians,"  and  in  Dublin,  where  she  lived  to 
hear  the  gallery  gods  roar  down  adoring  saluta- 
tions to  her  and  where,  you  may  be  sure,  the  re- 
publican sentiments  of  honest  Trueman  were  ap- 
plauded to  the  echo.  All  this  you  may  glean  from 
her  own  ever-readable  book,  "The  Autobiography 
of  an  Actress,"  within  whose  pages  you  learn  to 
know  and  admire  a  woman  who,  in  a  hundred 
different  ways,  recalls  that  most  charming  heroine 
in  English  fiction — 'Elizabeth  Bennet. 

When  Mrs.  Mowatt  died  she  was  fondly  and 
widely  known  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  but 
when  "Fashion"  was  produced  she  was  a  woman 
of  twenty-four  who  had  written  a  little  verse  and 


CELEBRATED  DECLINE  OF  DRAMA    131 

prose  and  given  some  public  readings.  Few  knew 
the  frail,  beautiful,  auburn-haired  young  woman 
who  watched  that  performance  from  a  box  and 
who  could  not  be  dragged  to  the  stage  even  on 
the  night  set  aside  for  her  benefit. 

Indeed,  she  had  some  cause  for  trepidation. 
She  had  ventured  on  the  comedy,  she  tells  us,  at 
the  suggestion,  and  perhaps  with  the  assistance, 
of  one  E.  S.  (possibly  Epes  Sargent),  who  had 
proposed  it  as  a  "fresh  channel  for  the  sarcastic 
ebullitions"  with  which  she  was  constantly  in- 
dulging her  friends  and  who  was  himself  the 
author  of  a  now-forgotten  tragedy  called 
"Velasco.'*  Certainly  it  was  Epes  Sargent  who 
wrote  the  prologue  for  the  first  performance.  The 
now  all  but  vanished  Puritan  prejudice  against 
the  stage,  the  fear  that  any  play  coming  from  an 
American  might  be  considered  a  presumption,  and 
the  redoubled  fear  because  that  American  was  a 
woman — all  these  trepidations  appeared  in  that 
prologue,  which  was  spoken  by  a  gentleman  who 
entered  reading  a  newspaper.    Here  it  is: 

"  'Fashion,  a  Comedy,^  I  '11  go ;  but  stay — 
Now  I  read  further,  't  is  a  native  play ! 
Bah !   Homemade  calicoes  are  well  enough. 
But  homemade  dramas  must  be  stupid  stuff. 


132         SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

Had  it  the  London  stamp,  'twould  do — but  then 
For  plays  we  lack  the  manners  and  the  men!" 

Thus  speaks  one  critic.    Here  another's  creed: — 

"'Fashion/'    What's   here?     (Reads.)      It   never   can 

succeed ! 
What!  from  a  woman's  pen?     It  takes  a  man 
To  write  a  comedy — no  woman  can." 

Well,  Sir,  and  what  say  you,  and  why  that  frown? 
His  eyes  uproUed,  he  lays  the  paper  down : — 
"Here,  take,"  he  says,  "the  unclean  thing  away! 
'T  is  tainted  with  the  notice  of  a  play !" 

But,  Sir ! — but,  gentlemen ! — you.  Sir,  who  think 
No  comedy  can  flow  from  native  ink, — 
Are  we  such  perfect  monsters,  or  such  dull. 
That  wit  no  traits  for  ridicule  can  cull? 
Have  we  no  foibles  here  to  be  redressed  ? 
No  vices  gibbeted  ?  no  crimes  confessed  ? 
"But  then  a  female  hand  can't  lay  the  lash  on!" 
How  know  you  that.  Sir,  when  the  theme  is  FASHION  ? 

And  now,  come  forth,  thou  man  of  sanctity ! 
How  shall  I  venture  a  reply  to  thee  ? 
The  stage — what  is  it,  though  beneath  thy  ban, 
But  a  daguerreotype  of  life  and  man? 
Arraign  poor  human  nature  if  you  will, 
But  let  the  DRAMA  have  her  mission  still; 
Let  her,  with  honest  purpose,  still  reflect 
The  faults  which  keen-eyed  Satire  may  detect. 
For  there  be  men  who  fear  not  an  hereafter, 
Yet  tremble  at  the  hell  of  public  laughter ! 

Friends,  from  these  scoffers  we  appeal  to  you! 
Condemn  the  false  but,  O,  applaud  the  true. 
Grant  that  some  wit  may  grow  on  native  soil, 
And  Art's  fair  fabric  rise  from  woman's  toil. 
While  we  exhibit  but  to  reprehend 
The  social  vices,  't  is  for  you  to  mend ! 


CELEBRATED  DECLINE  OF  DRAMA   133 

The  Puritan  prejudice  is  little  more  than  a 
memory  and  the  native  dramatist  is  no  longer 
abashed,  but — "What  I  from  a  woman's  pen'?" 
— that  surprise  still  lingers,  and,  if  we  are  to  be- 
lieve Fanny  Kemble,  always  will. 

If  "Fashion"  seems  archaic  to  us  all  to-day, 
it  also  seemed  archaic  in  some  respects  to  at  least 
one  of  those  who  attended  its  triumphant  pre- 
miere in  the  early  spring  of  1845.  That  was  Poe, 
who,  in  the  busiest  and  most  fruitful  year  of  his 
literary  life,  managed  to  devote  a  good  many 
hours  to  Mrs.  Mowatt's  comedy  and  came  to  know 
the  glow  of  having  some  of  his  suggestions  incor- 
porated in  the  production.  Writing  in  "The 
Broadway  Journal"  for  April  5 — "Fashion"  was 
produced  early  in  the  career  of  that  short-lived 
periodical  and  the  Park  was  but  a  step  from  its 
now  obliterated  offices  in  Beekman  Street — Poe 
began: 

So  deeply  have  we  felt  interested  in  the  question  of 
"Fashion's"  success  or  failure  that  we  have  been  to  see 
it  every  night  since  its  first  production ;  making  careful 
note  of  its  merits  and  defects  as  they  were  more  and 
more  distinctly  developed  in  the  gradually  perfected 
representation  of  the  play. 

As  to  that  success  or  failure,  there  was  little 
doubt  about  it.    The  play  was  mounted  in  what 


134        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

then  seemed  a  lavish  style,  and  in  his  first  review 
Poe,  who  must  have  known  his  Vincent  Crummies 
even  if  he  did  not  know  his  David  Belasco,  voiced 
this  prediction: 

"We  are  really  ashamed  to  record  our  delib- 
erate opinion  that  if  'Fashion'  succeed  at  all  (and 
we  think,  upon  the  whole,  that  it  will)  it  will  owe 
the  greater  portion  of  its  success  to  the  very  car- 
pets, the  very  ottomans,  the  very  chandeliers,  and 
the  very  conservatories  that  gained  so  decided  a 
popularity  for  that  most  inane  and  utterly  despi- 
cable of  all  modern  comedies — the  'London  Assur- 
ance' of  Boucicault."  But  a  year  later,  in  a  paper 
in  "Godey's  Lady's  Book,"  he  was  inclined  to 
think  that  "much  of  this  success  itself  is  referable 
to  the  interest  felt  in  her  [Mrs.  Mowatt]  as  a 
beautiful  woman  and  an  authoress." 

But  it  was  the  lack  of  any  evidences  of  a  fresh 
start  in  the  gradually  quickening  American  drama 
that  depressed  and  exasperated  the  critic  of  "The 
Broadway  Journal." 

"We  presume,"  he  said,  "that  not  even  the 
author  of  a  plot  such  as  this  would  be  disposed 
to  claim  for  it  anything  on  the  score  of  originality 
or  invention.  Had  it,  indeed,  been  designed  as 
a  burlesque  upon  the  arrant  conventionality  of 


CELEBRATED  DECLINE  OF  DRAMA    135 

stage  incidents  in  general  we  should  have  re- 
garded it  as  a  palpable  hit.  It  will  no  longer  do 
to  copy,  even  with  absolute  accuracy,  the  whole 
tone  of  even  so  ingenious  and  spirited  a  thing  as 
the  'School  for  Scandal.'  It  was  comparatively 
good  in  its  day,  but  it  would  be  positively  bad  at 
the  present  day,  and  imitations  of  it  are  inad- 
missible at  any  day." 

How  great  would  have  been  his  pain  and  sur- 
prise could  he  have  foreseen  that  the  imitative 
"Fashion"  would  itself  become  the  immediate 
forerunner  and  model  for  many  and  many  a  play 
and  that  it  would  recur  under  the  name  "Fixing 
Sister"  as  late  in  the  history  of  American  drama 
as  the  year  of  grace  1916.  How  greater  still 
would  have  been  his  anguish  could  he  have  known 
that  not  for  more  than  half  a  century  would  the 
playwrights  learn  to  drop  the  asides  and  solilo- 
quies which  even  then  offended  him  sorely.  For 
his  reflections  on  those  finally  discarded  conven- 
tions were  cast  as  long  ago  as  1845  in  his  review 
of  "Fashion."  Even  then  he  denounced  as  ab- 
surd "the  rectangular  crossings  and  recrossings 
of  the  dramatis  personae  on  the  stage ;  the  coming 
forward  to  the  footlights  when  anything  of  inter- 
est is  to  be  told ;  the  reading  of  private  letters  in 


136        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

a  loud  rhetorical  tone ;  the  preposterous  soliloquiz- 
ing; and  the  even  more  preposterous  'asides.' 
Will  our  playwrights  never  learn,  through  the 
dictates  of  common  sense,  that  an  audience  under 
no  circumstances  can  or  will  be  brought  to  con- 
ceive that  what  is  sonorous  in  their  own  ears  at  a 
distance  of  fifty  feet  from  the  speaker  cannot  be 
heard  by  an  actor  at  the  distance  of  one  or  two*? 
No  person  of  common  ingenuity  will  be  willing 
to  admit  that  even  a  most  intricate  dramatic  nar- 
rative could  not  be  rendered  intelligible  without 
these  monstrous  inartisticalities.  They  are  the 
relics  of  a  day  when  men  were  content  with  but 
little  of  that  true  art  whose  nature  they  imper- 
fectly understood  and  are  now  retained  solely 
through  that  supine  spirit  of  imitation  which 
grows  out  of  the  drama  itself  as  the  chief  of  the 
imitative  arts." 

And  that  was  nearly  eighty  years  ago. 


PRESENTING  "FOGG'S  FERRY" 

SPEAKING  of  the  celebrated  decline  of  the 
drama,  it  is  possible  to  derive  considerable 
comfort  and  now  and  again  a  little  entertain- 
ment from  reading  the  plays  which  attained  some 
measure  of  popularity  and  approval  in  the  seven- 
ties and  eighties — the  days  when  maidens  glowed 
over  "St.  Elmo"  and  all  Americans  wept  bitterly 
at  "Hazel  Kirke."  Turn  back  to  the  shriveling 
pages  of  the  New  York  dailies  for  May  15,  1882. 
The  amusement  columns  of  that  day  carried  this 
announcement : 

First  Appearance  of  the  Charming  Young  Comedienne 

MISSMINNIEMADDERN 

as 

CHIP 

in 

FOGG'S  FERRY 

Charles  E.  Callahan's  romantic  comedy-drama  of  human 

love  and  passion. 

Illustrated  by  a  strong  company  with  picturesque  scenery 

and  magnificent  effects. 

137 


138        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

"Fogg's  Ferry"  vanished  long  ago  into  the 
limbo  of  forgotten  plays,  but  I  have  read  it  with 
much  pleasure.  The  heroine,  Chip^  is  a  red- 
headed minx  of  the  sort  that  Lotta  used  to  play. 
Miss  Maddern  enacted  the  role  with  a  good  deal 
of  red  stocking.  Chip  dwells  at  the  river's  edge 
with  Fogg,  the  ferrjinan,  whom  she  supposes  to 
be  her  father.  The  suspicion  that  she  is  of  aris- 
tocratic birth,  that  she  is  one  of  those  countless 
heroines  who  never  fail  to  be  smuggled  away  in 
infancy,  is  broached  at  the  end  of  Act  I  in  the 
following  touching  scene: 

Mrs.  Fogg  [angrily].  Chip  can  do  as  she  likes  for 
all  me. 

Rawdon  [the  villain,  who  has  been  pursuing  Chip]. 
Yes,  you  old  hag,  Chip  can  do  as  she  likes !  You  are 
not  her  mother. 

Mrs.  Fogg  [staggered,  but  rallying] .  It — it 's  a  big 
lie.     Talk  's  cheap.     Who  minds  what  you  say  ? 

Chip.  I  do.  [Crosses  down  before  resuming].  I 
am  sixteen  years  old  to-day.  I  'm  no  longer  a  child. 
And  Mammy,  if  you  are  Mammy,  I  'm  going  to  leave 
the  old  ferry,  leave  forever.  I  know  I  'm  a  wild,  rough 
girl,  with  raising  not  the  best,  but  I  love  the  old  place, 
love  it  because  it 's  been  home.  I  will  still  call  you 
mother  until  I  have  better  knowledge  that  you  are  not 
than  Mr.  Rawdon's  word.  You  've  been  a  little  hard 
on  me  at  times,  but  I  forgive  it  all  now,  and  I  can't 
leave  you  without  a  tear.  Mr.  Rawdon,  I  don't  want 
even  you  to  think  badly  of  me.  I  know  I  'm  not  a  lady, 
and  you  don't  think  me  one,  but  I  never  yet  told  a  false- 


PRESENTING  "FOGG'S  FERRY"   139 

hood,  or  did  a  mean  thing,  and  I  reckon  that  will  count. 
You  called  me  a  lady,  spite  of  my  rough  ways.  Now 
that  we  come  to  part,  show  me  you  meant  it.  Tell  me, 
tell  me,  Mr.  Rawdon,  if  it 's  only  by  a  sign,  you  think 
I 'm  a  lady!  [Rawdon  hesitates.  White  advances  on 
him  threateningly,  Rawdon  finally  raises  his  hat  slightly 
and  bows.  White  removes  hat,  bowing.  Mrs.  Fogg 
stares  bewildered.  Enter  Fogg  from  house  and  takes  off 
hat.]     Picture. 

In  the  second  act  of  "Fogg's  Ferry,"  Chip  has 
been  imported  as  a  sort  of  demi-servant,  demi- 
protege  in  the  household  of  a  wealthy  gentleman, 
who,  of  course,  turns  out  later  to  be  her  father. 
Meanwhile,  the  spurious  daughter,  Blanche., 
treats  her  with  proper  scorn.  Blanche  is  that 
kind.  Says  Blanche:  "You  think  that  a  pretty 
home  in  this  monotonous  country  should  satisfy. 
It  does  not.  I  want  action,  society,  amusement, 
the  world.  Farm-hands  and  milk-maids — I  rank 
them  below  my  horse."  You  can  further  savor 
Blanche's  character  and  social  style  by  hearing 
her  give  one  order.  "You  may  take  charge  of 
this  precious  package,"  says  Blanche,  haughtily, 
"and  have  our  man  Still  tell  my  maid  Martha  to 
leave  it  in  my  room."  Whereat  the  shy  and  sub- 
missive Chip  steps  forward  and  offers  to  do  the 
errand.  Blanche.,  at  this  suggestion,  registers,  ac- 
cording to  the  author's  suggestion,  "a  supercilious 


140        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

look"  and  says :  "I  did  not  notice  the  presence  of 
of  a  menial."  Well,  Blanche  is  betrothed  to  the 
handsome  Bruce  Rawdon^  but  Razvdon,  suspect- 
ing that  Chip  is  the  real  heiress,  keeps  wooing  her 
on  the  side  to  be  safe. 

He  even  tries  to  frighten  her  by  hinting  at 
some  dark  secret  which  he  holds  over  her.  This 
dialogue  follows: 

Chip.     What  do  you  know  against  me*? 

Rawdon.  Enough  to  call  the  blush  of  shame  to  that 
speaking  countenance. 

Chip.  That  is  not  true.  If  you  assert  that  I  have 
ever  done  or  even  thought  a  shameful  act,  Mr.  Rawdon 
you — you  lie. 

Rawdon.  Not  you,  personally.  But  disgrace  often 
falls  on  the  innocent.  Questionable  antecedents,  for 
example.  I  could  reveal  something  concerning  you  that 
would  drive  you  from  this  house. 

Chip.  And  show  unmanly  cowardice.  My  life,  Mr. 
Rawdon,  has  been  low  and  hard.  I  am  struggling  to 
climb.  I  have  done  so.  Now  you  would  drive  me  back. 
Don't  you  feel  noble,  Bruce  Rawdon,  fighting  a  lone 
girl? 

Rawdon.  I  am  not  quite  a  cur.  Chip.  Let  us  be 
friends,  more  than  friends.  I  said  I  could  harm  you, 
not  woiUd. 

Chip.  Then  don't  lower  me  with  those  I  have  come 
to  value  and  cloud  all  my  poor  little  sunshine.  Mr. 
Rawdon,  if  you  have  such  power,  I  implore  you,  do  not 
use  it. 

Rawdon  [as  Chip  falls  on  her  knees].  Don't  kneel 
to  me,  little  lady. 


PRESENTING  "FOGG'S  FERRY"    141 

Blanche  {entering  at  this  juncture  and  enraged  by 
the  spectacle^.  What  is  my  affianced  husband  doing 
with  this  girl?  Why  on  your  knees,  my  lady?  Is  he 
pouring  into  willing  ears  his  blazing  passion? 

Rawdon   [aside].     Damnation! 

After  a  sequence  of  such  contretemps,  poor 
Chip  is  found  at  last,  wandering  disconsolate  by 
the  brim  of  the  old  river.  "They  all  shun  me," 
she  murmurs  to  herself.  "Why  not  end  it  all^ 
Those  dark  waters  leave  no  bloodstains.  The 
swift  current  will  carry  me  far  away  and  none 
will  know  my  fate."  But,  of  course,  she  is  inter- 
cepted in  her  plunge  by  Gerald  White^  the  hero 
and  predestined  sweetheart  of  Chip.  The  fol- 
lowing love-scene  is  worth  preserving: 

White.  Chip,  rash  child,  what  were  you  about  to 
do? 

Chip.  Go  away,  Mr.  White.  Do?  End  it  all. 
I  '11  find  peace  beneath  those  waters.  There  's  none  for 
me  here. 

White.  Fie,  Chip.  Youth  is  the  age  for  life,  not 
death.  You  are  discouraged  and  morbid  and  think  the 
world  contains  no  friend.  I  've  been  a  thoughtless  boy 
myself  but  this  has  ripened  me  into  manhood.  Trust 
me! 

Chip.  Gerald  White,  you  are  a  man  that  any  girl 
would  gladly  trust.  But  I  am  snared,  helpless,  wretched. 
What  is  to  become  of  me? 

White.  First  of  all,  wrap  up  in  this  coat.  [Offers 
coai.]     You  are  shivering. 


142         SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

Chip.  No,  no,  I  'm  not  cold.  Yes,  I  am  cold,  but 
not  the  way  you  think.  Once  when  a  little  child,  I  was 
lost  in  a  snowdrift  and  nearly  frozen.  But  I  am  colder 
now.    My  heart  is  frozen. 

White.  I  did  n't  mean  to  speak  yet,  but  this  affair 
precipitates  a  crisis. 

Chip.     What  do  you  mean? 

White.  Mean,  Chip?  You  are  to  me  hope,  incen- 
tive, aspiration,  my  one  dear  lodestone  to  success.  You 
must  be  my  little  wife.     Promise. 

Chip.  It  would  not  do,  Gerald  White.  Your  good 
heart,  your  pity  for  a  forlorn  wretch,  impels  you  to  speak 
those  words.  You  have  a  future — have  prospects.  I  'd 
be  but  a  clog.  How  could  a  gentleman  like  you  link 
his  destiny  with  an  outcast  like  me?     Leave  me. 

He  does  leave  her,  for  a  moment,  and  during 
that  moment  Chip  learns  that  more  villainy  is 
afoot.  Up  the  river  is  coming  a  steamboat  with 
her  benefactor  aboard,  also  many  valuables  and, 
though  she  little  guesses  it,  a  document  establish- 
ing her  identity  and  her  claim  to  a  fortune.  But 
in  the  path  of  the  boat  the  dark  plotters  have 
placed  a  time  bomb.  Chip,  with  whom  the  de- 
parting White  has  left  a  revolver  for  her  protec- 
tion, cries  out: 

The  steamboat  is  coming  and  they  've  put  that  thing 
in  the  channel  to  blow  her  up.  Merciful  Heaven,  what 
can  I  do?  If  I  could  but  reach  it.  Any  shock  would 
burst  it  and  save  the  boat.  But  I  can  do  nothing.  Oh, 
Heavenly  Father,  am  I  to  idle  here  while  innocent  lives 
are  butchered?    Ah,  the  pistol! 


PRESENTING  'TOGO'S  FERRY"    143 

So,  as  the  villains  rush  at  her  (one  of  them,  by 
the  way,  crying  out,  "Away,  gal,  or  jou  11  be 
killed"),  Ck2p  leaps  to  the  river's  bank,  fires  at 
the  bomb,  explodes  it,  sees  the  great  burst  of 
smoke  and  flame,  and  then,  as  the  curtain  falls, 
swoons  happily  away  at  the  sight  of  the  boat 
sailing  majestical  and  safe  to  the  dock. 

It  was  in  such  truck  as  "Fogg's  Ferry"  that 
Mrs.  Fiske  came  to  us  in  the  first  days  of  her 
stardom — she,  who  was  later  to  play  "Hannele" 
and  "Tess"  and  "Rosmersholm,"  who  was,  all 
told,  to  be  more  completely  identified  with  the 
loftier  literature  of  the  theater  than  any  other 
American  player  of  her  time.  It  is  a  cheerful  fact 
that  in  the  theater  a  "Fogg's  Ferry"  will  some- 
times lead  to  a  "Rosmersholm,"  which  is  whj  so 
many  of  us — players,  playwrights,  playgoers — 
keep  on  trying. 


XI 
EUGENE  O'NEILL 

THE  most  interesting  playwright  of  the  new 
generation  in  America  is  Eugene  G. 
O'Neill.  Short  and  long,  experimental,  a  little 
undisciplined  and  exuberant,  vigorous  always  and 
always  somber,  his  plays  have,  by  their  own  force, 
pushed  their  way  up  from  the  tentative  little 
playhouses  tucked  away  in  Greenwich  Village 
and  have  summoned  imperiously  the  wider  audi- 
ences of  the  pay-as-you-enter  theater.  Not  one  of 
them  but  has  its  blemishes  that  would  catch  the 
roving  eye  of  any  dramatic  critic  over  the  age 
of  two.  But  they  have  stature,  every  one  of  them, 
and  imagination  and  a  little  greatness.  And  they 
come  stalking  into  the  American  theater  like  a 
Hardy  novel  following  unexpectedly  on  a  suc- 
cession of  tales  by  Hall  Caine  and  Marie  Corelli. 
One  observes  among  the  scribes  and  Pharisees 
of  the  New  York  journals  an  itch  to  single  out 

one  of  his  works — "Beyond  the  Horizon,"  say,  or 

144 


EUGENE  O'NEILL  145 

"The  Hairy  Ape,"  or  perhaps  "The  Emperor 
Jones" — as  the  Great  American  Play.  That 
phrase  has  been  flitting  in  and  out  of  American 
criticism  ever  since  the  days  when  Walt  Whit- 
man was  somewhat  indignantly  reviewing  plays 
for  "The  Brooklyn  Eagle"  and  Edgar  Allan  Poe, 
for  lack  of  any  great  variety  of  theatrical  fare, 
was  going  night  after  night  to  record  the  changes 
made  in  Anna  Cora  Mowatt's  "Fashion"  at  the 
old  Park  Theater  of  the  forties.  WTien,  after 
many  years,  William  Vaughan  Moody  came  out 
of  the  cloister  with  "The  Great  Divide"  tucked 
under  his  arm,  a  false  alarm  went  up  and  created 
for  a  little  while  the  impression  that  the  thing 
had  been  done  at  last.  Nowadays  we  are  all 
more  disposed  to  recognize  the  Great  American 
Play  as  the  one  which  is  to  be  written  next  year. 
It  can,  however,  be  said  of  O'Neill  that  in  his 
own  equipment  are  to  be  found  two  factors,  both 
of  which,  under  the  doctrine  of  chances,  one  would 
rather  expect  to  find  present  in  the  equipment 
of  the  Great  American  Playwright.  For  one 
thing,  he  was  born  in  the  theater.  Then  he  spent 
a  part  of  his  life  in  work  and  wandering  so  remote 
from  it  that  he  found  a  perspective  on  life  and 
gained  such  knowledge  of  folks  as  they  can  never 


146        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

gain  whose  feet  know  only  the  path  that  stretches 
from  the  stage-door  to  the  Lambs'  Club.  You 
will  find  both  factors  present  in  the  years  of  prep- 
aration which  led  up  to  the  writing  of  "The  First 
Year,"  the  best  comedy  yet  written  by  an  Ameri- 
can. You  will  find  them  both  present  in  the 
years  of  preparation  which  led  up  to  the  writing 
of  "Abraham  Lincoln,"  the  most  interesting  play 
which  England  has  sent  to  America  in  ten  years. 
(They  are  always  saying  of  John  Drinkwater  that 
he  went  from  an  insurance  clerk's  stool  to  a  poet's 
garret  on  his  way  to  the  theater.  They  forget 
to  mention  that  his  father  was  an  actor  and  that 
young  Drinkwater  probably  heard  a  good  deal  of 
blank  verse  and  a  bit  of  rhetoric  in  his  nursery.) 
You  will  find  both  factors  present  in  the  stories 
of  Varesi  and  of  the  younger  Guitry,  to  catch  at 
two  names  which  happen  to  have  their  place  on 
near-by  pages. 

The  force  of  heredity  does  show  itself  again 
and  again  in  the  writing  of  plays,  chiefly,  I  think, 
in  a  predisposition  to  the  theater's  peculiar  idiom 
and  in  a  happy,  unchafing  submission  to  its  laws, 
of  which  the  natural-born  playwright  is  no  more 
aware,  as  he  pegs  away,  than  you,  while  walking 
the  streets  of  your  town,  are  aware  of  how  much 


EUGENE  O'NEILL  147 

the  law  of  gravitation  is  interfering  with  your 
personal  liberty. 

Eugene  O'Neill,  then,  is  the  younger  son  of 
that  fine  Irish  actor,  the  late  James  O'Neill,  a 
stalwart  of  the  Booth  and  Barrett  days,  who  later 
took  to  the  road  at  the  head  of  his  own  company, 
making  a  large  fortune  through  many  seasons  with 
the  play  of  "Monte  Cristo,"  and  retiring  at  last 
to  the  considerable  portion  of  the  State  of  Con- 
necticut which  he  had  bought  with  that  fortune. 
Eugene  O'Neill  was  born  in  Chicago  during  one 
of  those  tours,  and  it  is  worth  noting  that  the 
young  advance  man  who,  on  that  occasion,  was 
sent  hatless  through  the  midnight  streets  of  Chi- 
cago in  quest  of  a  doctor  was  the  same  George 
C.  Tyler  who,  nearly  thirty  years  later,  was  the 
first  Broadway  manager  to  buy  an  O'Neill  play. 

Since  the  establishment  of  O'Neill  as  a  play- 
wright, a  little  legend  of  wildness  has  grown  up 
about  his  )^outh.  It  was  known  that  he  had  gone 
in  and  out  of  Princeton  with  greater  expedition 
than  usually  marks  the  sojourns  at  that  uni- 
versity, and  there  was  a  persistent  tale  that  he 
discovered  the  sea  and  all  the  incalculable  part 
it  was  to  play  in  his  life  by  the  abrupt  but  salu- 
tary process  of  being  shanghaied.     This,  I  am 


148        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

told,  is  not  true,  but  at  all  events  he  did  become 
a  seaman,  did  find  himself  and  the  world  in  many 
a  far  and  motley  port,  and  did  come  home  at  last 
to  settle  down  on  a  lonely  strip  of  New  England 
coast,  there  to  write  play  after  play  in  which,  now 
remote  and  murmurous,  now  close  and  harsh  and 
insistent,  you  hear  the  music  of  the  sea. 


"Beyond  the  Horizon" 

There  came  to  New  York  one  afternoon  early 
in  1920,  as  a  tentative  and  hesitant  candidate  for 
whatever  hospitality  that  capricious  and  some- 
what harassed  city  might  be  moved  to  offer,  a  play 
which,  for  all  its  looseness  and  a  certain  high-and- 
mighty  impracticability,  was  possessed  of  ele- 
ments of  greatness.  This  was  "Beyond  the  Hori- 
zon," a  vital  and  valid  tragedy  by  Eugene  G. 
O'Neill — a  play  that  was  as  native  as  "Light- 
nin'  "  and  which  had  the  mood,  the  austerity,  and, 
all  in  all,  the  stature  of  a  novel  by  Thomas  Hardy. 
Seldom  had  an  American  playwright  written  for 
our  theater  a  piece  half  so  good  and  true. 

It  was  O'Neill's  first  long  play  to  reach  the 


EUGENE  O'NEILL  149 

stage.  It  had  been  preceded  by  six  or  seven  one- 
act  pieces,  produced  at  different  times  by  one  or 
another  of  the  experimental  theaters  in  the  by- 
ways of  New  York,  those  oft-derided,  semi- 
amateur  companies  which  are  serving  one  of  their 
chief  purposes  in  life  when  they  thus  aid  and  en- 
courage the  short  trial  flights  of  men  like  Eugene 
O'Neill. 

"Beyond  the  Horizon"  unfolds  the  tragedy  of 
a  young,  farm-bom  dreamer,  whose  romantic 
mind  and  frail  body  yearn  for  the  open  sea,  the 
swarming  ports  of  the  mysterious  East,  the  beck- 
oning world  beyond  the  line  of  hills  which  shut 
in  the  acres  of  his  home.  By  all  that  is  in  him, 
he  is  destined  for  a  wanderer's  life,  but  Fate,  in 
wanton  mood,  tethers  him  to  this  little  hill-cupped 
farm  and  watches  coolly  the  misery  and  decay 
this  means  for  all  his  house.  You  meet  him  first 
at  this  cross-roads  of  his  life  and  see  him  take  the 
wrong  turning.  To  him,  on  the  night  before  he 
is  to  set  sail  for  a  three  years'  cruise  around  the 
world,  comes  love  in  the  form  of  a  neighbor's 
daughter  whom  he  and  all  his  people  had  thought 
marked  rather  for  his  brother.  Blinded  by  the 
flame  kindled  in  that  moment  of  her  confession, 
he  lightly  foregoes  all  thought  of  the  world  be- 


150        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

yond  the  horizon,  plans  to  settle  at  once  on  the 
farm  with  his  jubilant  bride,  and  watches  serenely 
enough  while  his  heart-wrenched  brother  sets 
forth  on  the  cruise  that  was  to  have  been  his — 
the  bluff,  unromantic  brother  who,  irony  of 
ironies,  is  a  true  son  of  the  soil,  born  to  do  noth- 
ing but  work  its  fields  and  sure  to  wither  if  up- 
rooted. 

Then  you  follow  through  the  years  the  decay 
of  that  household,  the  tragedy  of  the  misfit.  You 
see  the  waning  of  love,  the  birth  of  disappoint- 
ment, the  corrosion  of  poverty  and  spite  and  dis- 
ease. You  watch  the  romance  burn  itself  out  to 
an  ugly  cinder.  You  see  the  woman  grow  drab 
and  dull  and  sullen,  and  you  see  the  man,  wasted 
by  the  consumption  another  life  might  have 
avoided,  crawl  at  last  out  of  the  hated  house  to 
die  on  the  road  he  should  have  traveled,  straining 
his  eyes  toward  the  hills  he  never  crossed. 

All  this  is  told  with  sure  dramatic  instinct, 
clear  understanding,  and  a  certain  quite  unsenti- 
mental compassion.  To  an  extent  unfamiliar  in 
our  theater,  this  play  seems  alive.  This  is  not 
merely  because  truth  works  within  it  nor  because 
of  the  realness  of  its  people.  It  is  rather  because 
of  the  visible  growth  and  change  that  take  place 
as  the  play  unfolds. 


EUGENE  O'NEILL  151 

The  aging  of  the  people  is  evidenced  by  more 
than  the  mere  graying  at  the  temples  and  the 
change  of  clothes,  those  easy  symbols  by  which 
the  theater  is  wont  to  recognize,  if  at  all,  the 
flight  of  the  years.  In  a  hundred  and  one  ways 
it  is  evidenced  as  well  by  the  slow  changing 
of  character  and  the  steady  deterioration  of  the 
souls — a  progression  of  the  spirit  which,  by  the 
way,  asked  great  things  of  the  actors,  and,  for  the 
most  part,  asked  not  in  vain.  O'Neill  paints  his 
canvas  with  what  Henley  called  "the  exquisite 
chromatics  of  decay."  You  might  almost  say, 
then,  that  the  play  is  alive  because  it  follows  the 
inexorable  processes  of  death.  Not  since  Arnold 
Bennett's  "Old  Wives'  Tale"  has  any  book  or 
play  given  us  quite  so  persuasively  a  sense  of  the 
passage  of  time. 

We  have  in  O'Neill  evidence  a-plenty  of  a 
predisposition  for  the  dramatic  that  is  as  pro- 
nounced as  the  Barrjinore  inheritance.  But  we 
also  have  one  who  has  lived  so  remote  from  the 
theater  that  he  has  been  uncorrupted  by  the 
merely  theatrical  and  has  carried  over  into  his 
own  workshop  not  one  of  the  worn  stencils  and 
battered  properties  which  are  the  dust-covered 
accumulation  of  years. 

The  same  remoteness,  which  so  freshens  the  air 


152         SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

of  his  play,  is  probably  responsible  also  for  its 
considerable  impracticability.  He  was  an  im- 
practical playwright,  for  instance,  who  wrote  into 
his  play  the  character  of  a  two-year-old  girl  and 
gave  her  two  long  scenes,  with  business  to  do  and 
lines  to  speak.  He  might  have  known  that  the 
part  would  have  to  be  given  to  a  child  disturb- 
ingly, almost  comically  older  than  the  baby  called 
for  by  the  context. 

Certainly  it  was  a  quite  impractical  playwright 
who  needlessly  split  each  of  his  three  acts  into  two 
scenes,  one  outside  and  one  inside  the  Mayo  farm- 
house. It  was  natural  enough  for  him  to  want  to 
show  the  highroad  of  Robert  Mayo's  dreams,  in- 
evitable that  he  should  itch  to  place  one  scene  on 
the  hilltop,  with  its  almost  protagonistic  vista  of 
the  distant  sea.  But  no  essential  purpose  is 
served  by  these  exteriors  which  could  not  have 
been  served  had  they  been  unfolded  within  the 
farm-house,  without  a  break  of  any  kind. 

Some  of  a  novelist's  luxuries  must  be  fore- 
gone by  a  writer  when  he  goes  into  the  theater, 
and  one  of  the  lessons  he  must  learn  is  that  the 
ever  illusion-dispelling  process  of  dropping  a  cur- 
tain, releasing  an  audience,  and  shifting  a  scene 
is  accepted  twice  and  sometimes  three  times  by  a 


EUGENE  O'NEILL  153 

modem  audience  without  even  an  unrecognized 
resistance.  But  any  further  interruption  works 
havoc  with  the  spell.  It  may  be  reported  here 
that,  at  the  second  performance,  the  third  act  was 
telescoped  into  a  single  scene,  and  it  may  be 
guessed  that  the  play  would  not  only  be  a  better 
knit  but  a  much  more  popular  piece  if  the  same 
violence  were  done  the  other  acts  when  the  piece 
is  revived. 

In  the  theater  what  you  want  and  what  you 
get  are  very  different.  A  more  shop-wise  play- 
wright would  have  known  that  for  his  exteriors, 
each  of  them  but  a  portion  of  an  act  and  there- 
fore certain  to  be  of  a  hasty  and  makeshift  nature, 
he  could  scarcely  count  on  so  illusive  and  charm- 
ing a  vista,  so  persuasive  a  creation  of  the  out- 
doors as  can  glorify  a  more  leisurely  scene.  The 
conspicuously  dinky  expanses  of  nature  provided 
for  "Beyond  the  Horizon"  must  have  been  a  good 
deal  of  a  shock  to  O'Neill.  The  wrinkled  skies, 
the  portiere-like  trees,  the  clouds  so  close  you  were 
in  momentary  expectation  that  a  scrub-lady  would 
waddle  on  and  wash  them — these  made  doubly 
futile  the  dashes  in  and  out  of  the  Mayo  farm- 
house. 

It  is  one  thing  for  O'Neill  to  sit  at  his  far- 


154        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

away  sea-coast  study  and  dream  a  scene — another 
thing  to  find  it  provided  for  his  play  when  the  first 
curtain  rises  in  New  York.  It  is  instructive  to 
compare  the  unillusive  setting  for  his  first  scene 
with  the  stage  picture  as  he  had  imagined  it  and 
set  it  forth  in  his  script: 

A  section  of  a  country  highway.  The  road  runs 
diagonally  from  the  left,  forward,  to  the  right,  rear, 
and  can  be  seen  winding  toward  the  horizon  like  a  pale 
ribbon  between  the  low,  rolling  hills  with  their  freshly 
plowed  fields  clearly  divided  from  each  other,  checker- 
board fashion,  by  the  lines  of  stone  walls  and  rough 
snake-fences. 

The  forward  triangle,  cut  off  by  the  road,  is  a  section 
of  a  field,  from  the  dark  earth  of  which  myriad  bright- 
green  blades  of  fall-sown  rye  are  sprouting.  A  straggling 
line  of  piled  rocks,  too  low  to  be  called  a  wall,  separates 
this  field  from  the   road. 

To  the  rear  of  the  road  is  a  ditch  with  a  slewing  grassy 
bank  on  the  far  side.  From  the  center  of  this  an  old, 
gnarled  apple-tree,  just  budding  into  leaf,  strains  its 
twisted  branches  heavenward  with  despairing  gestures, 
black  against  the  pallor  of  distance.  A  snake-fence  sidles 
grotesquely  from  left  to  right  along  the  top  of  the  bank, 
passing  beneath  the  apple-tree. 

The  dreamy  twilight  of  a  day  in  May  is  just  begin- 
ning. The  horizon  hills  are  still  rimmed  by  a  faint  line 
of  flame,  and  the  sky  above  them  is  radiant  with  the 
dying  flush  of  the  sunset.  This  disappears  gradually, 
and  stars  awake  in  the  infinite,  drowsily,  one  by  one. 

At  the  rise  of  the  curtain,  Robert  Mayo  is  discovered 
sitting  on  the  fence.  .  .  . 


EUGENE  O'NEILL  155 

What  O'Neill  actually  found  on  the  Morosco 
stage  was  what  people  usually  get  who  cry  for 
the  moon — instead  of  sixpence. 

There  is  no  need  now  to  expatiate  on  the  de- 
tails of  the  deeply  satisfying  performance  given 
by  the  composite  company  assembled  for  those 
special  matinees  but  there  must  be  special  mention 
of  the  gorgeous  performance  given  by  Louise 
Closser  Hale  as  the  semi-paralyzed  mother-in-law 
who  carps  away  at  life  from  her  wheel-chair  and 
regards  Robert's  yearnings  with  about  as  much 
sympathy  as  that  intensely  local  old  lady  who 
bought  David  Copperfied's  caul,  she  whose  motto 
in  life  was:  "Let  there  be  no  meandering."  It 
was  worth  going  miles  to  see  the  way  Mrs.  Hale 
made  that  wheel-chair  take  a  part  in  the  play. 
She  used  it  as  Mrs.  Fiske  uses  a  fan  or  a  lorgnette, 
something  to  brandish,  something  wherewith  to 
bridle  and  emphasize  a  thought  or  point  a  bit  of 
wit. 

This  cast  for  "Beyond  the  Horizon"  was  as- 
sembled from  the  two  companies  which  in  the 
evening  devoted  themselves  to  "For  the  Defense" 
and  "The  Storm."  The  success  of  the  amalgam, 
which  gave  the  producer  almost  as  much  freedom 
of  choice  as  he  needed,  suggests  that  the  double 


156        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

theater  is  probably  the  best  solution  of  the  prob- 
lem confronting  the  producer  who  is  minded  to 
create  a  repertory  theater.  While  New  York 
awaits  the  somewhat  doubtful  benefit  of  a  reper- 
tory theater,  it  may  be  observed  that  much  of  the 
work  expected  of  such  an  institution  is  being  done 
by  the  modest  institution  known  as  the  special 
matinee,  which  brought  "The  Yellow  Jacket"  to 
life  again,  and  which,  in  "Beyond  the  Horizon,'* 
gave  us  one  of  the  real  plays  of  our  time. 


2 

*The  Emperor  Jones" 

The  Provincetown  Players  began  their  1920- 
21  season  in  Macdougal  Street  with  the  impetus 
of  a  new  play  by  the  as  yet  unbridled  Eugene 
O'Neill,  an  extraordinarily  striking  and  dramatic 
study  of  panic  fear  which  is  called  "The  Emperor 
Jones."  It  reinforces  the  impression  that  for 
strength  and  originality  he  has  no  rival  among 
the  American  writers  for  the  stage.  Though  this 
new  play  of  his  was  so  clumsily  produced  that  its 
presentation  consisted  largely  of  long,  unventi- 
lated  intermissions  interspersed  with  fragmentary 


EUGENE  O'NEILL  157 

scenes,  it  wove  a  most  potent  spell,  thanks  partly 
to  the  force  and  cunning  of  its  author,  thanks 
partly  to  the  admirable  playing  of  Charles  S. 
Gilpin  in  a  title  role  so  predominant  that  the  play 
is  a  little  more  than  a  dramatic  monologue.  His 
was  an  uncommonly  powerful  and  imaginative 
performance,  in  several  respects  imsurpassed  that 
season  in  New  York.    Mr.  Gilpin  is  a  negro. 

The  'Emperor  Jones  is  a  burly  darky  from  the 
States  who  has  broken  jail  there  and  escaped  as 
a  stowaway  to  what  the  program  describes  as  "a 
West  Indian  island  not  yet  self-determined  by 
white  marines."  There,  thanks  a  good  deal  to 
the  American  business  philosophy  he  had  picked 
up  as  a  half-preoccupied  porter  listening  wide- 
eyed  in  the  smoking-rooms  of  the  Pullman  cars 
back  home,  he  is  sufficiently  bold,  ingenious,  and 
unscrupulous  to  make  himself  ruler  within  two 
years.  He  has  moved  unharmed  among  his  sullen 
subjects  by  virtue  of  a  legend  of  his  invention 
that  only  a  silver  bullet  could  harm  him — this 
part  of  the  play,  at  least,  was  not  Mr.  O'Neill's 
invention — but  now,  when  he  has  squeezed  from 
his  domain  just  about  all  the  wealth  it  will  yield, 
he  suspects  it  would  be  well  for  him  to  take  flight. 
As  the  play  begins,  the  measured  sound  of  a  beat- 


158        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

ing  tom-tom  in  the  hills  gives  warning  that  the 
natives  are  in  conclave  there,  using  all  manner  of 
incantations  to  work  up  their  courage  to  the  point 
of  rebellion. 

The  hour  of  Emperor  Jones  has  come,  and 
nightfall  finds  him  already  at  the  edge  of  the  dis- 
tant forest,  through  whose  trackless  waste  he 
knows  a  way  to  safety  and  freedom.  He  has  food 
hidden  there  and,  anyway,  his  revolver  carries 
five  bullets  for  his  enemies  and  one  of  silver  for 
himself  in  case  he  is  ever  really  cornered. 

It  is  a  bold,  self-reliant  adventurer  who  strikes 
out  into  the  jungle  at  sunset.  It  is  a  confused, 
broken,  naked,  half-crazed  creature  who,  at  dawn, 
stumbles  blindly  back  to  his  starting-place,  only 
to  find  the  natives  calmly  waiting  there  to  shoot 
him  down  with  bullets  they  have  been  piously 
molding  according  to  his  own  prescription. 

The  forest  has  broken  him.  Full  of  strange 
sounds  and  shadows,  it  conjures  up  visions  of  his 
own  and  his  ancestral  past.  These  haunt  him, 
and  at  each  crisis  of  fear  he  fires  wildly  into  the 
darkness  and  goes  crashing  on  through  the  under- 
brush, losing  his  way,  wasting  all  his  defense, 
signaling  his  path,  and  waking  a  thousand  sinister 
echoes  to  work  still  more  upon  his  terrible  fear. 


EUGENE  O'NEILL  159 

It  begins  with  the  rattle  of  invisible  dice  in  the 
darkness,  and  then,  as  in  a  little  clearing,  he  sud- 
denly sees  the  squatting  darky  he  had  slain  back 
home  in  a  gamblers'  squarrel.  He  plunges  on, 
but  only  to  find  himself  once  more  strangely 
caught  in  the  old  chain-gang,  while  the  guard 
cracks  that  same  whip  whose  stinging  lash  had 
goaded  him  to  another  murder.  Then,  as  his  fear 
quickens,  the  forest  fills  with  old-fashioned  peo- 
ple who  stare  at  him  and  bid  for  him.  They  seem 
to  be  standing  him  on  some  sort  of  block.  They 
examine  his  teeth,  test  his  strength,  flex  his  biceps. 
The  scene  yields  only  to  the  galley  of  a  slave-ship, 
and  his  own  cries  of  terror  take  up  the  rhythmic 
lamentation  of  his  people.  Finally,  it  is  a  race 
memory  of  old  Congo  fears  which  drives  him 
shrieking  back  through  the  forest  to  the  very 
clearing  whence  he  had  started  and  where  now 
his  death  so  complacently  awaits  him. 

From  first  to  last,  through  all  the  agonizing 
circle  of  his  flight,  he  is  followed  by  the  dull  beat, 
beat,  beat  of  the  tom-tom,  ever  nearer,  ever  faster, 
till  it  seems  to  be  playing  an  ominous  accompani- 
ment to  his  mounting  panic.  The  heightening 
effect  of  this  device  is  much  as  you  might  imagine. 

Through  most  of  O'Neill's  imaginings  for  the 


i6o        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

stage  there  sound  just  such  drum-beats  of  ap- 
proaching disaster — now  symbolized  in  something 
physical  like  that  tom-tom  which  hounded  the 
fleeing  Jones.,  now  merely  something  heard  in  the 
overtones  of  the  play,  as  Robert  Ingersoll,  listen- 
ing to  Mrs.  Fiske's  "Tess,"  could  hear  the  "omin- 
ous footfalls  of  Fate."  In  "The  First  Man"  it 
was  the  coming  of  a  baby.  In  "The  Straw"  it 
was  the  unhalting  progress  of  tuberculosis,  for  it 
was  characteristic  of  O'Neill  to  unfold  one  of 
his  romances  in  a  tuberculosis  sanatorium  and  a 
sign  of  the  new  times  that  this  play  was  not 
spumed  by  the  so-called  "commercial  theater" 
but  was  lavishly  staged  in  New  York. 

"The  Emperor  Jones"  not  only  moved  up  to 
Broadway  but  toured  the  country  all  the  next 
year.  It  owed  its  great  appeal  chiefly  to  its  dis- 
covery in  Gilpin  of  a  really  superb  actor,  a  player 
of  fine  understanding,  genuine  emotional  power, 
and  an  uncommonly  beautiful  voice.  It  is  in  the 
irony  of  things  that  for  this  authentic  and  con- 
spicuous talent  there  is  in  existence  no  dramatic 
literature.  Except  for  "The  Emperor  Jones," 
there  is  no  first-rate  play  which  has  a  negro  role 
of  Gilpin's  stature,  and  there  is  not  likely  to  be 
another  unless  his  talent   inspires  one.    While 


EUGENE  O'NEILL  161 

"The  Emperor  Jones"  was  being  written,  Gilpin 
was  running  an  elevator. 


3 
"The  Hairy  Ape" 

April,  1922,  saw  "The  Hairy  Ape"  installed 
at  the  Plymouth.  For  the  third  time  an  O'Neill 
piece  burst  the  seams  of  the  little  Provincetown 
Playhouse.  Like  "Diff'rent"  and  "The  Emperor 
Jones,"  it  reached  Broadway  by  the  Macdougal 
Street  route.  "The  Hairy  Ape,"  which  the  author 
dryly  describes  in  his  manuscript  as  "a  comedy 
of  ancient  and  modern  life,"  is  a  brutal,  startling, 
dismaying,  and  singularly  vivid  play,  which  will 
linger  in  the  memory  long  after  most  of  the  stuff 
that  season  produced  has  faded  out  of  mind. 

The  beginnings  of  it  can  be  traced  back  to  the 
days  ten  or  eleven  years  before  when  O'Neill  was 
an"  able  seaman  aboard  one  of  the  ships  of  the 
American  Line  and  came  to  know  a  certain  stoker 
on  the  same  ship — a  huge  Liverpool  Irishman, 
who  drank  enormously,  relished  nothing  in  all  the 
world  so  much  as  a  good  knock-down-and-drag- 
out  fight,  and  who  had  a  mighty  pride  in  his  own 


i62        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

strength,  a  pride  that  gloried  in  the  heat  and  ex- 
haustion of  the  stoke-hole  which  would  drop  the 
weaklings  and  leave  him  roaring  with  mirth  at 
the  sight  of  them  carried  out.  He  was  just  such 
a  specimen,  therefore,  as  the  Yank  Smith  on 
whose  immense  shoulders  the  ominous,  nightmare 
events  of  "The  Hairy  Ape"  press  down  like  the 
crowding  phantoms  in  some  fantastic  picture  of 
Despair. 

In  the  mutual  snobbery  of  the  liner,  O'Neill 
as  a  seaman  could  hardly  exchange  confidences 
with  the  stoker,  but  they  got  to  know  each  other 
ashore  in  the  greater  democracy  of  Johnny  the 
Priest's  saloon  down  in  Fulton  Street  just  around 
the  corner  from  West — the  same  saloon,  prob- 
ably, through  whose  grimy  windows  the  light 
filtered  on  the  gaudy  hair  and  cheerless  face  of 
Anna  Christie.  There,  over  his  beer,  O'Neill  was 
free  to  contemplate  the  immense  complacency  of 
the  Irishman  and  his  glowing  satisfaction  with 
what  most  folks  would  h^ve  regarded  as  an  un- 
enviable role  in  the  world.  The  memory  of  that 
satisfaction  furnished  a  curious  background  for 
the  news  which  drifted  up  from  the  water-front 
some  years  later — the  tidings  that  one  night,  when 
the  ship  was  plowing  along  in  mid-Atlantic,  the 


1 


EUGENE  O'NEILL  163 

big  stoker  had  stolen  up  on  deck  and  jumped  over- 
board. Why*?  What  had  happened  to  shake 
that  Gargantuan  contentment?  What  had  broken 
in  and  so  disturbed  a  vast  satisfaction  with  the 
world  that  the  big  fellow  had  been  moved  to  leave 
it?  O'Neill  never  heard  if  any  one  knew,  but 
out  of  his  own  speculation  there  took  shape  at  last 
the  play  called  "The  Hairy  Ape." 

It  is  a  fantastic  play  in  eight  scenes.  The 
earlier  ones  are  laid  aboard  a  liner  streaking  across 
the  sea  from  New  York  to  Liverpool.  When  you 
want  a  play  of  blinding  contrasts,  you  can  hardly 
do  better  than  board  one  of  these  ships,  which 
are  floating  microcosms  of  an  inequitable  world. 
Side  by  side,  so  close  they  can  almost  touch  each 
other,  are  the  very  extremes  of  fortune — great 
poverty  and  great  wealth;  here  squalor,  there 
luxury;  on  the  one  hand  toil  as  terrific  as  man 
ever  planned  for  man,  and  on  the  other  an  empty 
and  nonchalant  leisure — side  by  side,  so  close 
they  can  almost  touch  each  other.  O'Neill  is  in 
quest  of  contrasts  as  sharp  as  ever  any  afforded  by 
the  gentry  of  Rome  a-sprawl  on  the  couches  of 
ships  sped  along  the  Mediterranean  by  row  on 
row  of  weary,  back-bent  galley-slaves.  He 
catches  at  both  pictures  and  shows  them  in  swift 


i64        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

succession.  First  comes  the  cramped,  dim-lit, 
crowded  firemen's  forecastle,  packed  with  roaring 
sweating  giants,  glistening  men  stripped  to  the 
waists  with  mighty  shoulders  and  low  foreheads, 
motley  men  scooped  up  from  all  corners  of  the 
earth.  It  is  their  job  to  feed  the  furnaces  and 
forge  the  heat  that  will  drive  the  ship  across  the 
world.  From  their  clamor  you  shift  suddenly  to 
the  hurricane-deck,  a  gaily  painted  smoke-stack 
silhouetted  against  an  incredibly  blue  sky,  with 
no  more  smoke  than  just  a  ribbon  of  it  to  make 
an  interesting  composition  out  of  the  picture  of 
that  sky.  The  deck  is  spotless  and  sun-splashed 
and  in  one  of  the  deck-chairs  that  have  been 
drawn  offishly  into  the  turn  of  the  promenade  a 
foolish,  bloodless  girl  lies  toying  with  some  ideas. 
Down  below  Yank  is  bellowing  his  own.  Let 
the  weaklings,  who  can't  breathe  and  swallow 
coal-dust,  sigh,  if  they  must,  for  the  fresh  air  and 
the  peace  of  the  old  sailing  days.  Granted  that 
work  in  the  stoke-hole  is  hell.  He  chants  his 
credo : 

Hell,  sure !  Dat  's  my  favorite  climate.  I  eat  it  up ! 
It 's  me  makes  it  roar.  It 's  me  makes  it  move.  Sure, 
on'y  for  me  everything  stops.  It  all  goes  dead,  get  me? 
De  noise  and  smoke  and  all  de  engines  movin'  de  woild, 
dey  stop.    Dere  ain't  nothin'  no  more !    Dat 's  what  I  'm 


EUGENE  O'NEILL  16^ 

sayin'.  Everything  else  dat  makes  de  woild  move, 
somp'n  makes  it  move.  It  can't  move  without  somp'n 
else,  see  ?  Den  yuh  get  down  to  me.  I  'm  at  the  bottom, 
get  me  ?  Dere  ain't  nothin'  foither.  I  'm  de  end !  I  'm 
de  start !  I  start  somp'n  and  de  woild  moves.  It — dat 's 
me !  De  new  dat's  moidern  de  old.  I  'm  de  ting  in  coal 
dat  makes  it  boin ;  I  'm  steam  and  oil  for  de  engines ; 
I  'm  de  ting  in  noise  dat  makes  you  hear  it ;  I  'm  smoke 
and  express  trains,  and  steamers  and  factory  whistles ; 
I  'm  de  ting  in  gold  dat  makes  it  money !  And  I  'm  what 
makes  iron  into  steel !  Steel,  dat  stands  for  de  whole 
ting !  And  I  'm  steel — steel — steel !  I  'm  de  muscle  in 
steel,  de  punch  behind  it !  [As  he  says  this  he  pounds 
with  his  fist  against  the  steel  bunk.  All  the  men,  roused 
to  a  pitch  of  frenzied  self-glorification  by  his  speech,  do 
likewise.  There  is  a  deafening  metallic  roar  through 
which  Yank's  voice  can  be  heard  bellowing. \  Slaves, 
hell !  We  run  de  whole  woiks.  We  're  it,  get  me !  All 
de  rich  guys  dat  tink  dey  're  somp'n,  dey  ain't  nothin' ! 
Dey  don't  belong.  But  us  guys,  we  're  in  de  move,  we  're 
at  de  bottom,  de  whole  ting  is  us,  see  ?     We  belong ! 

To  Yank  then  comes  the  girl,  mincing  down 
the  companionway,  guarded  by  solicitous  ship's 
officers,  a  little  flustered  by  her  pouting,  wilful 
determination  to  see  how  the  other  half  lives. 
Into  the  very  spot-light  of  the  insatiable  furnaces 
she  trips,  at  a  moment  when  the  big  stoker  is 
roaring  with  rage  at  the  imperious  whistle  of  the 
engineer,  when  his  little  eyes  are  red  with  anger 
and  his  mouth  is  spewing  out  a  Niagara  of  oaths 
and   when  his  shovel   is  brandished   like  some 


i66        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

bludgeon  in  the  hands  of  the  Neanderthal  Man. 
At  that  moment  in  walks  the  girl.  Her  face  tells 
plainly  enough  that  she  has  come  suddenly  on 
something  monstrous  and  bestial  and  terrifying, 
a  gorilla,  perhaps — a  hairy  ape.  She  stands  trans- 
fixed for  a  moment,  staring  open-mouthed.  Then 
she  faints.  It  is  the  world's  first  notice  to  Yank 
that  he  does  n't  belong. 

The  rest  of  the  play  is  just  his  hurt,  bewil- 
dered, furious  effort  to  get  even — to  get  at  her, 
if  he  can,  to  rip  her  finery  off  her  and  to  spit  in 
her  white,  transparent  face.  Frustrated  in  that, 
he  searches  for  others  like  her  to  mash  them  and 
trample  them  under  foot.  The  buffetings  which 
the  unruffled  world  deals  him  in  his  pursuit  of 
this  revenge  (with  ever  and  always  the  phrase 
"hairy  ape"  spat  at  him  as  he  flounders  along)  are 
all  pictured  by  the  play  in  short,  stabbing  scenes 
so  distorted  and  so  fantastic  that  "The  Hairy 
Ape"  takes  on  the  bad  dream  accent  and  aspect 
of  an  ugly  fable.  That  is  why  it  seems  the  most 
natural  of  consequences  that  he  should  steal  into 
the  night-shrouded  Zoo  at  last  and  acknowledge 
the  gorilla  as  his  brother,  that  he  should  open  the 
cage  and  invite  the  gorilla  to  come  out  and  join 
him  in  one  last  bout  with  an  unfriendly  world. 


EUGENE  O'NEILL  167 

That  is  why  in  the  final  moment  of  the  play  you 
accept  it  as  inevitable  that  the  gorilla  should 
crunch  him  to  death  in  two  gigantic,  hairy  arms 
and  pitch  him  dying  into  the  cage. 

In  this  piece  there  are  new  evidences  of  O'Neill 
writing  not  in  isolation,  as  had  been  his  wont,  but 
on  the  very  stage  where  his  work  was  to  be  played. 
The  new  play  suggested  a  greater  familiarity  with 
the  theater  as  an  instrument,  and,  as  all  plays 
should  be,  was  evidently  worked  out  in  collabora- 
tion with  the  artists  who  would  make  it  visible 
and  the  actors  who  would  give  it  body.  And 
here,  for  once,  was  O'Neill  writing  with  a  disposi- 
tion not  to  express  all  his  thoughts  in  words,  but 
to  leave  something  to  the  players.  And  Louis 
Wolheim,  who  played  the  stoker,  made  a  genuine 
contribution  to  "The  Hairy  Ape."  Once  he  was 
a  foot-ball  player  at  Cornell,  on  whose  gridiron 
he  came  honorably  by  the  broken  nose  which  was 
so  useful  a  part  of  his  make-up.  Later  he  taught 
at  Cornell  and  engineered  in  Mexico  and  finally 
sidled  into  the  theater  under  the  guidance  of 
Lionel  Barrymore.  He  did  himself  proud  in  his 
first  important  role. 

For  the  adornment  of  his  piece  O'Neill  dove 
deep  into  Bobby  Jones's  locker.  Both  the  scene  on 


i6?J        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

Blackwell's  Island  and  the  scene  in  the  monkey- 
house  were  capital  examples  of  inferential  stage- 
setting.  In  the  former  you  saw  only  the  one  cell 
and  the  one  crouched  prisoner  behind  its  steel 
bars.  But  a  jabbering  chorus  of  many  voices 
pitched  words  down  out  of  the  surrounding  dark- 
ness and  the  very  angle  of  the  single  cell  started 
your  imagination  to  constructing  a  hundred 
others,  fading  away  into  that  darkness,  row  on 
row,  tier  on  tier. 

There  were  two  especial  strictures  in  the  criti- 
cism which  trailed  after  "The  Hairy  Ape" 
through  the  dailies  and  weeklies.  One  deplored 
the  sudden  fantastic  note  entering  into  the  com- 
position so  late  as  the  fifth  scene.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  a  sensitive  ear  would  detect  that  note  in 
the  very  first  scene,  with  its  regimented  motion 
and  its  stylicized  laughter  and  its  abstractions 
of  thought.  And  in  each  succeeding  scene.  The 
notion  that  those  earlier  episodes  aboard  ship  were 
naturalistically  wrought  was  a  curious  illusion  of 
the  playgoer's  mind,  traceable  probably  to  the 
squalor  of  the  language  and  to  the  same  confu- 
sion which  was  addling  the  lady,  who,  when  ask- 
ing whether  such-and-such  a  current  play  was 
"realistic,"  replied,  "Oh,  no;  it  deals  with  very 
refined  and  pleasant  people." 


EUGENE  O'NEILL  169 

The  other  stricture  dealt  with  the  oaths  which 
flow  in  a  steady  cascade  from  the  baffled  and  un- 
happy stoker.  They  were  stigmatized  as  "inade- 
quate." There  is  some  justice  in  this,  for  now 
and  again  Yank's  profanity  mounts  to  a  rather 
limp  epithet,  less  rich  and  racy,  certainly,  than 
those  which  must  have  eased  the  feelings  of  the 
real  Yank.  They  recall  to  mind  an  eloquent 
base-ball  captain  long  ago  in  the  sinful  past  of 
Hamilton  College.  He  was  hopping  up  and  down 
expressing  in  vivid  monosyllables  his  emotions 
about  a  certain  error  when,  midway,  he  discov- 
ered the  president  standing  benignly  near.  The 
captain's  arms  were  spread,  his  face  contorted, 
his  eyes  blazing.  And  from  between  his  wild  lips 
sped  the  words,  "Good  gracious !"  Still,  it  must 
be  admitted  that  a  tolerable  substitute  idiom  for 
stoke-hole  speech  is  difficult  to  invent,  as  John 
Dos  Passos  found  out  when  he  came  to  write 
"Three  Soldiers" — or  at  least  when  he  came  to 
read  those  parts  of  his  manuscript  his  publishers 
had  decided  to  print.  And  it  ought  to  be  recorded 
that  the  speech  of  "The  Hairy  Ape"  is  rougher 
talk  than  the  American  theater  has  heard  in  our 
time.  As  we  sat  listening  to  it,  it  is  difficult  to 
believe  it  was  only  five  years  before  that  one 
coarse  epithet  popping  out  in  the  climax  of  "Our 


170        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

Betters"  seemed  so  extraordinarily  bold  and  in- 
spired fourteen  articles  on  what  the  present-day 
stage  was  coming  to.  Evidently  it  was  coming 
to  "The  Hairy  Ape."  My  own  dissatisfaction  is 
rather  with  the  language  spoken  on  the  hurricane- 
deck.  Granted  that  it  is  meant  to  be  small  talk 
artificialized  like  filigree,  still  it  suggests  too  much 
the  way  the  duchesses  talk  in  a  scullery-maid's 
first  novel. 


XII 
DEBURAU,   PERE,   AND   GUITRY,   FILS 

SACHA  GUITRY,  himself  an  actor  and  the 
son  of  a  greater  one,  had  spent  all  his  days 
in  the  theater  writing  and  playing  in  gay,  jaunty, 
mischievous  trivial  pieces,  when,  in  the  darkest 
days  of  the  war,  the  doctors  sentenced  him  to  an 
early  death,  and  he  was  smitten  with  a  panicky 
desire  to  write  such  a  piece  as  might  live  after 
him  in  the  eternal  repertoire  of  the  French  the- 
ater. So  he  vanished  from  Paris,  and  when  he 
came  back  he  carried  under  his  arm  the  manu- 
script of  his  masterpiece.  He  had  wrought  a  play 
around  the  two  Deburaus,  father  and  son,  who, 
one  after  the  other,  as  Pierrots  incomparable, 
drew  the  gamins  and  the  great  folk  of  their  Paris 
to  the  little  Theatre  des  Funambules  in  the  hey- 
day of  French  pantomime. 

Looking  back  through  the  shifting  veils  of 
eighty  years,  he  wrote  him  a  tragi-comedy  of  dis- 
illusionment, a  lonely  and  beautiful  play  which 

is  an  expression  of  the  philosophy  of  the  stage, 

171 


172         SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

the  credo  of  the  actor,  the  sad-faced  comedian's 
apologia  pro  vita  sua.  In  spirited  and  occa- 
sionally magical  vers  lihre^  he  poured  forth  this 
piece  which  in  the  list  of  those  rare  plays  written 
not  only  by  the  theater  and  for  the  theater,  but 
of  the  theater,  is  without  a  peer  in  the  dramatic 
literature  of  his  country  and  ours. 

It  was  done  into  execrable  English  verse  by 
Granville  Barker  and  its  New  York  premiere 
marked  the  debut  here  as  a  star  of  Lionel  Atwill, 
coming  before  us  in  such  a  role  as  Mansfield 
sought  and  coveted  all  the  days  of  his  crowded 
life,  such  a  role  as  another  Lionel  might  have 
envied  him.  The  performance  brought  Atwill 
much  applause  and  gave  David  Belasco  no  end 
of  satisfaction.  But,  though  it  packed  his  the- 
ater from  Christmas  to  June,  it  was  so  costly  a 
venture  that  it  lost  him  a  king's  ransom. 

As  a  background  for  this  play  it  is  worth  while 
turning  the  dusty  pages  of  forgotten  memoirs  to 
know  a  little  better  some  of  the  people  who  come 
to  life  in  its  scenes.  Victor  Hugo,  Georges  Sand, 
Alfred  de  Musset — these  pass  in  the  procession. 
But  more  important  and  less  familiar  are  two 
— Jean-Gaspard  Deburau  himself  and  Marie 
Duplessis. 


DEBURAU,  PERE,  GUITRY,  FILS    173 

The  elder  Deburau  came  out  of  Poland,  one 
of  a  nomad  tribe  of  acrobats,  clowns,  and  tight- 
rope walkers,  who  more  than  a  century  ago  jour- 
neyed afoot  as  far  as  Amiens  in  vain  quest  of 
some  weirdly  rumored  inheritance.  In  the  play, 
Guitry  has  him  thinking  of  the  past  as  one  in- 
terminable wire  stretched  across  Europe,  on  which 
he  seems  to  see  his  family  forever  walking,  walk- 
ing, walking.  Of  the  rest  of  this  family  there 
is  no  easy  record,  but  in  the  thirties  the  boy  sepa- 
rates out  from  this  obscurity  as  the  most  famous 
of  those  great  pantomimists  who  took  the  immi- 
grant zany  of  the  old  Italian  harlequinades  and 
wrought  in  him  a  strange  transmutation.  With 
the  breath  of  their  spirit  this  spoiled  darling  of 
the  moon  became  not  merely  a  wise  fool.  He  be- 
came the  wise  fool  in  all  of  us,  became  the  spirit 
of  his  age,  became  Paris  itself. 

Only  once  did  Deburau  as  Pierrot  venture  out- 
side the  little  playhouse  in  the  Boulevard  du 
Temple.  That  was  when  his  far-spreading  fame 
led  to  his  invitation  to  the  Palais-Royal  stage, 
where  his  failure  with  the  fashionable  folk  was 
abysmal-  Not  of  such  stuff  were  the  fond  patrons 
of  the  Funambules,  who  were  the  gamins  and 
grisettes  of  the  quarter,  mixed  with  the  stray 


174        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

cognoscenti  who  would  understand.  These  sat 
enthralled  before  him  till  the  day  of  his  death, 
when  his  son  Charles  succeeded  him  in  the  great 
tradition. 

Marie  Duplessis  was  that  pale,  fragile,  ex- 
quisite courtesan  of  Deburau's  time,  who  was  born 
of  a  poor  laundress  and  who  died  at  twenty  and 
of  whom  a  curious  counterfeit  fame  has  survived 
because,  among  the  many  youthful  lovers  that 
chance  threw  in  her  way,  was  one  called  Alex- 
andre Dumas.  After  her  death,  while  her  grave 
in  Montmartre  Cemetery  was  still  heaped  with 
fresh  camelias,  some  previously  invisible  relatives 
appeared  suddenly  on  the  scene  and  sold  at  public 
auction  the  beautiful  tapestries  and  carvings  and 
paintings  which  had  filled  her  apartment  opposite 
the  Madeleine.  There  used  to  be  a  polite  legend 
that  among  these  Dumas,  fils^  found  the  memor- 
abilia from  which  he  wrought  "La  Dame  aux 
Camelias,"  the  famous  mass  of  sentiment  which 
was  hawked  about  our  theaters  for  so  many  dec- 
ades under  the  monstrous  name  of  "Camille;  or, 
the  Fate  of  a  Coquette."  But  Henry  Bidou  (that 
distinguished  writer  on  theaters  and  war),  in  his 
recent  series  of  articles  on  the  work  of  the  younger 
Dumas,  describes  bluntly  his  youthful  devotion 


DEBURAU,  PERE,  GUITRY,  FILS    175 

to  Marie  Duplessis,  tells  of  the  eventual  interfer- 
ence by  the  elder  Dumas,  of  how  the  young  lover 
received  from  his  father  a  fund  of  twenty-five 
louis  to  make  a  suitable  and  soothing  parting  gift 
and  was  then  packed  off  to  Spain,  whence  he  did 
not  return  until  after  his  lady  had  died.  It  is 
thus  one  of  the  interesting  aspects  of  "Deburau" 
that  it  calls  for  the  appearance  of  Camille  as  the 
serene  girl  she  was  and  not  as  Dumas  disguised 
her,  certainly  not  as  one  who  could,  by  any 
stretch  of  the  imagination,  be  embodied,  as  so 
often  she  has  been,  by  bulky  emotional  actresses 
in  their  declining  years. 

Her  reappearance  in  "Deburau"  added  a  local 
interest  to  a  curious  paper  on  the  Paris  of 
its  day  which  appeared  in  a  contemporary  issue 
of  the  "Mercure  de  France."  It  seems  that  when 
the  author  of  "La  Dame  aux  Camelias"  died  in 
1896,  that  magazine  held  a  symposium  as  to  his 
merits  among  the  younger  French  writers,  who 
proved  almost  unanimous  in  the  conviction  that 
as  a  writer  he  was  no  great  shakes.  This  verdict, 
very  annoying  as  it  was  to  the  devoted  boule- 
vardiers,  provoked  from  the  "Figaro"  a  challenge 
to  repeat  the  question  after  a  calming  and  en- 
lightening interval  of  twenty-five  years.     When 


176        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

the  twenty-five  years  were  past,  the  "Mer- 
cure"  regarded  the  present-day  attitude  toward 
the  younger  Dumas  as  so  obviously  adverse  that 
a  questionnaire  was  hardly  worth  the  time  and 
trouble.  Which  decision  left  space  in  the  maga- 
zine for  an  elaborate  historical  essay  by  Johannes 
Gros  on  the  last  days  of  that  pretty  peasant  girl 
from  Normandy  whose  name  was  Alphonsine 
Plessis,  who  liked  to  call  herself  Marie  Duplessis, 
and  who  after  her  death  was  immortalized,  or  at 
least  made  world-famous,  under  the  name  of 
Marguerite  Gautier  in  the  novel  and  play  writ- 
ten by  one  of  her  lovers.  In  one  of  the  most  de- 
lightful books  ever  written — that  tome  of  anony- 
mous reminiscence  which  appeared  in  the  late 
eighties  under  the  title  of  "An  Englishman  in 
Paris" — there  is  a  considerable  foot-note  devoted 
to  Marie,  tracing  her  ancestry  back  through  sev- 
eral generations  of  somewhat  macabre  amours  in 
Normandy. 

The  kind  of  patient  and  enthusiastic  scholar- 
ship, the  kind  of  passion  for  the  unimportant, 
wherewith  Gros  reconstructed  that  almost  for- 
gotten and  essentially  insignificant  courtesan  as  a 
scientist  reconstructs  a  dinosaur  frcMn  the  most 
meager  of  osseous  remains,  recalls  the  earnest  cul- 


DEBURAU,  PERE,  GUITRY,  FILS    177 

ture  of  the  student  at  Halle  who  spent  three  years 
on  a  thesis  about  the  use  of  the  indefinite  article  in 
Edmund  Spenser.  It  is  amazing  to  follow  the 
care  with  which  every  lover,  every  creditor,  every 
portrait  painter  (there  were,  it  might  amuse  you 
to  know,  two  portraits  by  the  Norman  painter 
named  Charles  Chaplin),  every  jewel,  every  fan, 
every  detail  of  death  and  interment  have  been 
pursued  through  the  old  journals,  letters,  dossiers, 
and  archives  of  that  day. 

This  interest  but  reflects  the  interest  felt  at  the 
time  and  which  was  surprising  enough  even  then 
■ — surprising  certainly  to  one  avid  onlooker, 
Charles  Dickens,  who  was  then  in  Paris,  and 
whose  letters  are  full  of  the  prevailing  excitement. 
"For  several  days,"  he  wrote  the  Comte  d'Orsay, 
"all  political,  artistic  and  business  questions  have 
been  dropped  by  the  newspapers.  Everything 
gives  way  to  a  much  more  important  event,  the 
romantic  death  of  one  of  the  glories  of  the  demi- 
moride,  the  beautiful,  the  celebrated  Marie 
Duplessis."  You  may  be  sure  he  attended  the 
much-recorded  sale  of  her  effects,  which  scat- 
tered her  possessions  far  and  wide  and  even  put 
under  the  hammer  certain  letters  which  escaped 
her  own  fireplace  only  to  go  up  many  years  later 


178        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

in  the  smoke  of  the  San  Francisco  fire.    Said 
Dickens : 

"To  see  the  general  wonder  and  sorrow,  you  would 
have  thought  it  concerned  a  hero  or  a  Jeanne  d'Arc.  But 
the  enthusiasm  knew  no  bounds  when  Eugene  Sue  bought 
the  courtesan's  prayer  book." 

How  much  greater  would  his  surprise  have 
been  had  he  known  that  the  interest  would  flare 
up  again  eighty  years  later  in  a  foreign  land  I 
Yet  he  himself  could  not  help  sharing  that 
interest.     Nor  can  we. 

The  first  act  of  "Deburau"  introduces  a  mute 
performance  of  "Marrchand  d'Habits" — you 
might  translate  that  as  "Any  Clo-o-othes^" — a 
pantomime  to  which  Pierrot  must  play  a  role  akin 
to  that  of  Matthias  in  "The  Bells."  It  is  a  night 
of  painful  agitation  at  the  Funambules,  for  the 
players  there  have  just  glimpsed  a  copy  of  the 
"Journal  des  Debats"  (the  same  journal,  by  the 
way,  for  which  the  aforesaid  Monsieur  Bidou  is 
now  dramatic  critic)  wherein  Deburau  is  singled 
out  among  all  the  rest  for  adulation.  At  the 
stage-door  are  waiting  certain  impressionable 
ladies  who  would  have  words  with  him.  But,  as 
always  in  such  cases,  the  frightened  comedian 
contrives  to  talk  of  his  little  son  and  to  show 


DEBURAU,  PERE,  GUITRY,  FILS    179 

them  his  wife's  portrait.  He  even  tries  to  get 
rid  of  an  embarrassing  and  anonymous  floral 
tribute,  utterly  unaware  that  it  is  the  timid  offer- 
ing of  the  old  box-office  woman.  He  is  headed 
dutifully  for  home  when,  in  the  shadow  beside 
the  theater,  he  comes  face  to  face  with  Marie 
Duplessis.  They  are  marching  off  together  arm 
in  arm  as  the  curtain  falls. 

The  Second  Act 

The  scene  is  a  week  later  at  Mane's  apartment. 
Deburau  has  been  a  half-jubilant,  half-remorse- 
ful visitor  pretty  frequently  ever  since.  It  is  he 
who  christens  her  as  the  Lady  with  the  Camelias, 
a  name  she  promptly  adopts  as  something  alto- 
gether chic  and  unusual.  When  he  pays  a  duty 
visit  home,  only  to  find  that  his  wife  has  run 
away,  he  starts  joyfully  back,  with  his  bird-cage 
tucked  under  his  arm,  leading  his  ten-year-old 
son  with  one  hand  and  his  little  dog  with  the 
other,  bent  on  laying  them  all  at  Marie's  feet  and 
spending  the  rest  of  his  days  in  her  radiant  com- 
pany. But  he  finds  her  in  the  arms  of  a  new  lover, 
a  handsome  young  fellow  of  her  own  age,  and 
poor  Deburau  reads  his  sentence  in  her  compas- 
sionate glance.    Amid  his  startled  apologies  and 


i8o        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

adieus,  you  see  her  trying  to  introduce  them,  and 
as  the  curtain  falls  you  hear  her  saying : 

"Jean-Gaspard  Deburau — Monsieur  Armand  Duval." 

The  Third  Act 

The  scene  is  seven  years  later  in  the  garret 
where  Deburau  dwells  with  his  son  Charles^  now 
a  strapping  fellow  of  seventeen.  Poor  Deburau, 
sick  in  spirit  and  half  sick  in  body,  has  been 
absent  these  six  months  from  the  cast  at  the 
Funambules.  It  is  the  more  disturbing,  there- 
fore, for  him  to  learn  that  his  son,  who  has  always 
been  his  prompter  and  his  most  devoted  audience, 
now  aspires  himself  to  play  Pierrot  and,  with  the 
callousness  of  youth,  actually  thinks  of  doing  so 
under  the  name  of  Deburau.  The  elder  puts  his 
foot  down  hard,  yet  he  knows  uneasily  that  the 
boy  has  only  to  wait.  It  is  crushing  for  the  father 
to  learn,  too,  that  when,  as  he  had  daily  hoped 
for  seven  years,  Marie  comes  tripping  in  at  last, 
she  does  so  not  as  one  keeping  a  tryst,  but  in  the 
mood  of  a  sympathetic  Lady  Bountiful,  hoping 
to  cheer  him  with  her  gay  stories  of  how  the  bully- 
ing Duval,  pere,  had  tried  vainly  to  take  her 
Armand  from  her,  and  determined  to  smuggle  in 
a  doctor  who  shall  patch  up  her  dear  old  friend 


DEBURAU,  PERE,  GUITRY,  FILS    181 

and  so  restore  him  to  the  stage.  It  is  the  uncon- 
scious doctor,  quite  unaware  of  his  disconsolate 
patient's  identity,  who  really  administers  the 
magic  medicine.  No  drugs,  no  blood-letting,  will 
put  the  sick  man  on  his  feet,  the  doctor  says.  He 
must  get  up  and  out,  must  see  nature  and  color 
and  music  and  paintings — at  all  of  which  pre- 
scription Deburau  makes  a  wry  face.  Well,  then, 
the  theater.  Whereat  Deburau  laughs  grimly. 
The  very  thing,  persists  the  doctor.  He  should 
go  to  the  best  physicians  in  the  world,  the  actors 
who  can  banish  care  and  awaken  a  cleansing, 
healing  laughter.  He  could  not  do  better  than 
go  to  the  Funambules.  W^hy,  there  was  there,  or 
had  been  until  a  short  time  ago,  a  mighty  healer 
called  Deburau —  That  is  enough.  Small  won- 
der that,  as  the  third  act  curtain  falls,  the  old 
comedian  is  reaching  for  his  hat  and  starting  back, 
much  uplifted,  to  the  stage  he  had  deserted. 

The  Fourth  Act 

The  scene  is  that  afternoon  at  the  Funambules. 
Deburau  is  again  on  its  stage,  but,  in  the  months 
of  his  retirement,  something  has  gone  out  of  him. 
He  can  no  longer  stir  the  old  laughter  and,  know- 
ing this,  he  falters  and  blunders  till,  like  a  doom, 


i82        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

the  first  hiss  is  heard  in  the  auditorium — a  hiss 
caught  up  and  echoed  till  the  uproar  takes  on  the 
sound  of  a  crowd  trampling  something  underfoot. 
The  comedian  steps  forward  and  lifts  a  shaking 
hand  for  silence.  It  is  breathless  when  they 
realize  that,  after  many  years,  he  will  try  at  last 
to  speak,  that  they  are  there  on  the  night  when 
the  long-muted  voice  of  Deburau  will  be  heard  at 
the  Funambules.  He  does  open  his  mouth,  but 
no  word  comes.  Then  he  falls  back  upon  the  only 
language  he  knows,  the  eloquent  speech  of  panto- 
mime. In  gestures  he  tells  them  how  sick  he  has 
been,  how  sick  he  is,  that  he  can  no  longer  play 
for  their  delight,  that  this  is  his  last  appearance. 
He  makes  his  excuses,  speaks  his  farewell.  As 
the  tears  streak  down  the  now  tragic  white  of  his 
moon-face,  he  makes  his  last  gesture,  a  kiss  blown 
from  the  Funambules  to  the  gamins  of  Paris.  The 
curtain,  by  the  chance  of  a  breaking  string,  comes 
down  like  the  knife  of  the  guillotine.  The  cur- 
tain knew. 

The  silent  audience  disperses  silently.  In  the 
empty  hall  a  moment  later  the  excited  manager 
is  busy  with  the  new  playbills  for  the  night,  but 
it  is  Deburau  who  comes  to  tell  them  they  need 
not  bother  to  change  the  name  of  the  Pierrot.    In 


DEBURAU,  PERE,  GUITRY,  FILS    183 

what  follows,  you  see  him  leading  forth  his  son 
as  his  successor,  himself  volunteering  to  step  into 
the  prompter's  place  in  order  that,  just  as  there 
had  always  been  a  little  of  his  son  in  his  own 
work,  so  now  there  should  be  a  little  of  himself 
in  the  work  of  his  son.  From  his  box  of  colors 
and  grease,  he  makes  up  the  boy  for  the  night's 
performance,  the  boy  sitting  with  his  back  to  you, 
while  with  flying  fingers  and  with  the  other 
players  gathering  curiously  about  the  engrossed 
two,  Deburau  turns  over  to  his  son,  in  a  long  and 
beautiful  speech  which  will  be  famous,  the  secret, 
the  spirit,  the  philosophy  of  his  craft.  He  holds 
before  the  wide-eyed,  consecrated  boy  the  prom- 
ised satisfaction  that  can  come  from  hearty,  care- 
banishing,  brow-smoothing  laughter.  It  is  worth 
noting  that  this  apologia  for  the  role  of  the  loustic 
in  the  regiment  of  life  was  spoken  from  Guitry's 
stage  in  Paris  by  Guitry  himself  in  that  black, 
anxious  month  of  February,  1918,  while  Paris 
was -gritting  her  teeth  and  waiting  for  the  last 
great  German  drive. 

WTien  the  speech  is  done  and  the  boy  turns 
round,  you  see  he  wears  the  white  face  and 
startled  eyes  of  Pierrot.  It  is  to  such  a  one  that 
the  father,  drawing  him  aside,  whispers  his  last 


i84        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

counsel,  his  gospel  of  work  and  love,  without 
either  of  which  life  is  an  empty  thing.  There 
is  a  final  bustle  of  preparation  as  the  exultant 
barker  can  be  heard  without,  drumming  up  the 
audience  for  the  night.  "This  way,  ladies  and 
gentlemen,  this  way!  A  new  Deburau^  a  young 
Deburau^  a  handsome  Deburau^  a  better  Debu- 
rau!" — a  pean  that  visibly  annoys  the  dethroned 
king  and  worries  not  a  little  the  heir  apparent. 
The  troubled  boy  goes  to  him  in  unutterable 
sympathy. 

''It  is  not  true !"  he  says.  "Why,  the  man  must 
be  crazy!" 

Deburau  shakes  his  head. 

"But,  Father,  how  could  I  have  your  success 
in  these  roles  of  yours*?" 

"Why  not*?"  his  father  retorts  with  perhaps  a 
little  grimace  of  pain.  "You  never  know.  The 
public  is  so  funny." 

Then,  as  the  orchestra  breaks  into  a  gay  march 
and  the  first  spectators  drift  in  from  the  boule- 
vards, the  curtain  falls  on  the  play  of  "Deburau." 


XIII 
THE  LEGEND  OF  'TETER  PAN" 

OUT  of  the  Never  Never  Land,  straight  from 
the  tree-tops  where  the  fairies  sleep  at 
nights,  there  flew  in  through  the  high  nursery 
window  set  at  the  back  of  the  Empire  stage  in 
New  York  one  clear  November  night  the  im- 
mortal boy  who  had  run  away  from  home  the 
day  that  he  was  born.  A  welcome  awaited  him, 
and  for  a  time  it  seemed  as  though  there  would 
be  never  a  Christmas  in  New  York  without  its 
"Peter  Pan."  It  is  not  now  among  the  prob- 
abilities that  Maude  Adams  will  ever  again  at- 
tempt the  role  which  she  made  so  peculiarly  her 
own;  and  for  a  time  the  play  is  likely  to  gather 
dust,  for  it  would  be  a  reckless  player  who  would 
venture  soon  among  the  clustering  memories  of 
those  first  performance.  But  down  off  the  shelf 
pirates,  Indians,  crocodile,  Nan,  Liza,  Slightly, 
Nibs,  and  all  will  climb  again  some  day,  and  in 
the  mists  that  shroud  the  seasons  to  come  we  see 
the    shadow    of   no    parting    from    Peter   Fan. 

i8s 


i86        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

Precious  few  plays  written  in  the  English  lan- 
guage in  the  last  fifty  years  are  half  so  sure  of  a 
place  in  the  theater  of  the  twenty-first  century 
as  this  airy  fantasy  by  J.  M.  Barrie. 

This  interval  would  be  a  good  time  for  some 
one  who  knows,  actually  to  write  out  for  all  of  us 
the  history  of  that  play,  not  in  scraps  of  news- 
paper comment,  now  here,  now  there,  this  season, 
last  season,  next  season,  but  rather  in  a  book  of 
its  own — "The  Legend  of  'Peter  Pan.'  "  Once 
upon  a  time  Louis  Evans  Shipman,  editor  of 
"Life,"  did  publish  a  diverting  volume  that 
chronicled  the  adventures  of  a  play  of  his.  Now, 
"D'Arcy  of  the  Guards"  was  neither  a  real  suc- 
cess nor  a  real  failure,  but  just  one  of  the  little 
sillies  that  are  not  sure  what  they  are.  The  his- 
tory of  "Peter  Pan,"  however,  will  be  an  alto- 
gether happy  story,  working  up  from  the  strange 
days  when,  like  the  abandoned  Tinker  Bell,  the 
play  seemed  to  hang  fearfully  in  the  balance  be- 
tween life  and  death,  down  to  its  last  revival  and 
the  story  of  the  service  its  royalties  gave  behind 
the  lines  in  France. 

It  was  on  the  night  of  November  6,  1905,  that 
"Peter  Pan"  was  played  for  the  first  time  in  New 
.York.     It  had  been  produced  triumphantly  in 


THE  LEGEND  OF  "PETER  PAN"  187 

London  the  year  before,  and  quite  a  fever  of  ex- 
pectancy awaited  its  coming  to  America.  The  ar- 
resting poster  with  its  "Do  you  believe  in  fairies'?" 
bedecked  the  bill-boards  of  Manhattan,  and 
sleepy  little  messenger  boys  curled  up  in  the  cor- 
ner of  the  Empire  lobby  waiting  all  night  for  the 
beginning  of  the  box-office  sale.  But  the  news 
from  the  road  was  disheartening.  Washington 
evidently  did  not  believe  in  fairies,  and  Buifalo 
was  cold  to  "Peter  Pan."  On  the  opening  night 
in  New  York,  a  polite  and  baffled  audience 
laughed  and  applauded  loyally — but  at  discon- 
certingly wrong  moments. 

The  author  of  "The  Legend  of  Teter  Pan'  " 
— with  whatever  of  reluctance  or  malice  may 
color  his  disposition — must  write  one  inexorable 
chapter  devoted  to  the  collapse  of  the  New  York 
reviewers.  Some  there  were  who  responded  gaily 
to  the  appeal  of  the  play,  but  there  were  others 
who  did  not  respond  at  all.  Now  listen  to  this 
oracle : 

Mr.  Barrie,  in  the  excess  of  his  facetiousness,  has 
seen  fit  once  more  to  mystify  his  audience,  and  if  "Peter 
Pan"  fails  to  be  a  prolonged  success  here,  the  blame  must 
be  laid  entirely  at  his  door.  It  is  not  only  a  mystery 
but  a  great  disappointment  ...  a  conglomeration  of 
balderdash,    cheap    melodrama    and    third-rate    extrava- 


i88        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

ganza.  From  the  beginning  of  its  second  act,  it  invari- 
ably challenges  comparison  with  plays  like  "The  Wizard 
of  Oz"  and  "Babes  in  Toyland,"  and  it  fails  to  show 
either  the  sense  of  fun  or  childhood  which  made  both 
pieces  a  delight  to  children  of  all  ages.  .  .  .  For  an 
artist  of  Maude  Adams's  standing,  this  play  seems  like 
a  waste  of  time.  And  incidentally,  if  "Peter  Pan"  is  a 
play  at  all,  it  is  a  very  bad  one. 

The  most  famous  critic  of  them  all,  both  a  bet- 
ter and  an  older  soldier,  spoke  half  patronizingly 
of  the  piece  and  described  it  as  a  fantasy  "that 
sometimes  runs  into  puerility,"  while  still  another 
opined : 

Although  its  novelty  will  doubtless  catch  the  town, 
you  might  imagine,  after  the  charm  of  its  delightful  first 
act  has  worn  off,  that  Mr.  Barrie  had  finished  "A  Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream"  by  getting  up  out  of  the  wrojig 
side  of  the  dramatic  bed. 

It  is  amusing  to  remember  that  the  first  few 
enthusiasts  who  proselyted  in  the  fortnight  before 
the  tide  turned  and  the  play  began  to  win  its 
way  were  regarded  by  some  as  pseudo-intellec- 
tuals, arrant  poseurs,  indeed,  for  all  the  world  as 
though  cheering  for  "Peter  Pan"  were  like  walk- 
ing down  Piccadilly  with  a  tulip  or  a  lily  in  your 
medieval  hand. 

"Where,"  asked  one,  "is  the  convincing  spirit? 
Where  is  the  illusion*?    Where  is  the  seductive 


THE  LEGEND  OF  "PETER  PAN"  189 

charm  to  transport  us  away  from  this  workaday 
world?  'Peter  Pan'  is  diverting  but  is  not  satis- 
fying." 

Where  indeed*?  But  the  severest  rebuke  that 
was  administered  to  the  playwright  appeared  in 
"a  morning  newspaper"  and  contained  these  bitter 
reflections : 

"Peter  Pan"  is  a  riddle  to  which  there  is  no  answer; 
it  baiBed  a  large  and  typical  Maude  Adams  house  last 
night.  .  .  .  His  [Barrie's]  ideas  of  childlike  simplicity 
are  ludicrous.  They  seem  to  be  the  fancies  of  a  dis- 
ordered stomach.  .  .  .  With  the  best  of  intentions,  it  is 
quite  impossible  to  see  any  artistic  merit  in  "Peter  Pan." 
Occasionally  it  suggested  jim-jams  but  never  the  lucidity 
of  mere  dope.  ...  It  was  a  pity  to  see  Miss  Adams,  with 
her  defightful  gifts,  wasting  herself  on  such  drivel. 

Well,  the  third-rate  extravaganza  celebrated  its 
tenth  anniversary  with  no  signs  of  mortality;  the 
fancies  of  a  disordered  stomach  have  rejoiced 
more  than  a  thousand  audiences  in  America.  The 
Smee^  the  Jukes^  and  the  Captain  Hook  among 
the  unbelievers  have  been  pushed  into  the  sea, 
and  on  its  tenth  anniversary  was  it  fancy  that 
the  sound  the  wind  brought  from  the  Empire  was 
the  crowing  of  Peter  triumphant"? 

But  the  critics  were  not  alone  in  their  miscon- 
struction of  the  play.    Few,  if  any,  read  its  rosy 


190        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

future,  and  it  is  gravely  to  be  doubted  if  Barrie 
himself  dreamed  at  the  start  that  his  piece  about 
the  boy  who  would  n't  grow  up  would  bring  him 
more  money  than  any  other  play  he  had  ever 
written.  This  must  be  all  set  forth,  of  course, 
in  the  chapter  on  origins,  where  one  page  will  tell 
how  the  play  grew  from  a  section  of  "The  Little 
White  Bird"  (just  as  "A  Kiss  for  Cinderella" 
grew  later  from  another  page)  and  where  another 
will  tell  how  he  found  the  names.  Wendy,  for 
instance,  was  what  Henley's  little  girl  used  to 
call  Barrie  in  her  sincere  effort  to  call  him 
"Friend."  In  the  chapter  on  origins  it  must  be 
told,  too,  how  Barrie  at  first  regarded  "Peter  Pan'* 
as  Hook's  play.  That  is  why  he  took  it  to  His 
Majesty's  before  he  took  it  to  the  Duke  of  York's. 
He  had  in  his  mind  the  vision  of  a  pirate  the  like 
of  which  had  never  been  seen  on  stage  or  quarter- 
deck, so  he  planned  the  role  of  Hook  for  Sir 
Herbert  Tree. 

"Barrie  has  gone  out  of  his  mind,  Frohman,'* 
Tree  said.  "I  am  sorry  to  say  it;  but  you  ought 
to  know  it.  He  's  just  read  me  a  play.  He  is 
going  to  read  it  to  you,  so  I  am  warning  you.  I 
know  I  have  not  gone  woozy  in  my  mind,  because 
I  have  tested  myself  since  hearing  the  play;  but 


THE  LEGEND  OF  "PETER  PAN"  191 

Barrie  must  be  mad.  He  has  written  four  acts 
all  about  fairies,  children,  and  Indians  running 
through  the  most  incoherent  story  you  ever 
listened  to;  and  what  do  you  suppose?  The  last 
act  is  to  be  set  on  top  of  trees." 

And  long  afterward  Tree,  in  becoming  sack- 
cloth and  ashes,  told  at  a  dinner  how  he  in  after 
years  would  have  to  be  known  as  the  manager 
who  had  refused  "Peter  Pan,"  nor  did  it  subtract 
from  the  pain  of  confession  that  it  was  misunder- 
stood, and  next  day  he  had  to  explain  he  had 
scarcely  been  seeking  to  convey  that  it  was  the 
role  of  Feter  for  which  Mr.  Barrie  had  intended 
him. 

Indeed,  "Peter  Pan"  in  London  is  already  in 
its  anecdotage.  One  of  the  best  stories  clinging 
to  it  is  that  which  tells  of  the  English  player 
who  had  had  some  success  in  one  of  its  roles  and 
who,  on  the  eve  of  the  annual  revival,  went  to 
Barrie  with  the  bold  request  that  he  be  "fea- 
tured" in  the  playbills.  "And  what  would  'fea- 
turing* be?"  asked  Barrie,  cautiously.  Whereat 
the  actor,  growing  expansive  under  this  show  of 
interest,  explained  in  detail  that,  while  scarcely 
hoping  to  be  starred,  he  did  aspire  to  have  his 
name  separated  from  the  lesser  folk  of  the  com- 


192        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

pany  by  a  large,  preliminary  "AND."  "AND?" 
said  Barrie.     "Why  not  BUT*?" 

There  must  follow  an  account  of  the  Barrie 
manuscript  which  has  never  been  published,  the 
curious  script  with  its  striking  contrasts,  the  most 
amazing  flights  of  fancy,  the  most  delicate  gossa- 
mer of  playful  writing  from  charming  Barrie,  fol- 
lowed by  the  most  prosaic  and  most  mechanically 
exact  of  stage  directions  from  canny  Barrie, 
wherein  is  planned  every  detail  of  the  immensely 
complicated  machinery  for  putting  "Peter  Pan" 
upon  the  stage.  Here  would  be  printed  the  miss- 
ing scene,  Marooner's  Rock  or  the  Mermaid's 
Lagoon,  a  scene  long  omitted  from  the  play  as 
performed,  but  which  would  seem  to  have  sup- 
plied to  Frohman  the  "great  adventure"  line 
wherewith  the  little  manager  made  his  big  exit 
from  the  stage. 

Then  there  would  have  to  be  a  chapter  headed 
"The  Professor's  Love  Story,"  for  that  would 
tell  the  tale  of  how  Barrie  came  to  be  a  play- 
wright at  all.  That  placid  and  extremely  senti- 
mental comedy,  which  first  the  late  E.  S.  Willard 
and  later  George  Arliss  played  in  America,  is  not 
an  especially  good  play  and,  what  is  more,  not 
especially  Barriesque  in  its  twists  or  its  flavor.    It 


THE  LEGEND  OF  "PETER  PAN"  193 

was  a  comedy  written  by  Barrie  before  he  learned 
how  (or  found  the  courage)  just  to  "play  him- 
self" in  the  theater.  Just  as  Wilde,  sauntering 
through  the  stage-door  for  the  first  time,  uncon- 
sciously felt  called  upon  to  behave  like  other 
playwrights  (Sardou  in  particular),  so  it  did  not 
occur  to  Barrie  to  let  his  fancy  play  over  his  own 
materials,  to  let  his  humor  and  pathos  find  ex- 
pression in  any  other  patterns  than  the  conven- 
tional ones  of  the  day,  when  the  theater  was  still 
fragrant  with  "Sweet  Lavender."  Groping  his 
way  in  the  unaccustomed  darkness  back-stage,  it 
was  natural  enough  for  him  to  try  first  to  use  the 
properties  accumulated  there.  "The  Importance 
of  Being  Earnest"  was  not  Wilde's  first  play,  nor 
his  second;  and  in  the  same  way  Barrie,  imlike 
Dunsany  and  Chesterton,  did  not  immediately 
set  to  work  to  create  his  own  properties,  his  own 
devices,  his  own  idiom. 

It  was  toward  the  close  of  1892  that  "The  Pro- 
fessor's Love  Story"  was  presented  "for  the  first 
time  on  any  stage,"  at  the  old  Star  Theater,  which 
stood  down  at  Thirteenth  Street  and  Broadway, 
New  York.  How  really  long  ago  that  was  may 
best  be  suggested  by  turning  to  the  yellowed  files 
of  "The  Times"  and  noting  in  the  head-lines  of 


194        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

its  review  of  the  play  the  discerning  description 
of  Barrie  as  "a  dramatist  of  rare  promise." 

For  "The  Professor's  Love  Story"  was  timidly 
and  laboriously  contrived  when  the  gentle  Scot, 
a  man  of  thirty,  was  a  new-comer  among  the  play- 
wrights. Several  times  he  had  turned  frcxn  the 
"Auld  Licht  Idyls"  and  the  first  chronicles  of 
Thrums  to  try  his  hand  at  writing  for  the  theater, 
but  the  results  had  not  been  encouraging  and  he 
had  no  great  reputation  of  any  sort  when  he 
finished  his  romance  of  Professor  GoodwilUe  and 
set  forth  on  his  round  of  the  actor-managers  of 
the  day.  He  had  just  emerged  from  what  he  likes 
to  call  his  younger  and  happiest  days,  when  what- 
ever he  got  out  of  life  he  got  by  writing.  Then 
a  new  chair  or  a  new  etching  meant  a  new  article 
to  pay  for  it,  and  when  the  coveted  thing  arrived 
the  piece  that  had  made  it  possible  was  promptly 
pasted  on  the  back.  Barrie's  name  was  no  open 
sesame  in  those  days,  and  had  England  been  at 
war  then  he  could  not,  out  of  his  own  pocket,  have 
supported  a  single  cot,  let  alone  a  complete  hos- 
pital, in  France.    But  that 's  telling. 

With  "The  Professor's  Love  Story"  under  his 
arm,  he  went  first  to  Irving,  who  was  kind  and 
let  him  read  the  play  aloud.    And  though  Irving 


THE  LEGEND  OF  "PETER  PAN"  195 

did  not  seem  possessed  to  accept  it,  he  did  pave 
the  way  to  John  Hare  with  a  letter  of  introduc- 
tion. Hare  was  more  forbidding  and  insisted 
on  reading  to  himself  the  manuscript,  which  was 
engrossed  in  a  mystical  handwriting  that  only 
Feter  Pan  and  Tinker  Bell  could  have  deciphered. 
Furthermore,  on  the  plea  that  it  made  him  nerv- 
ous, Hare  would  not  keep  the  agitated  playwright 
at  hand  as  an  interpreter,  but  sternly  banished 
him  to  the  anteroom  to  await  the  verdict.  He 
did  not  have  to  wait  long,  for  the  verdict  came 
almost  immediately.  It  came  in  the  form  of 
groans,  roars,  and  imprecations  from  within,  and 
there  the  startled  Barrie  found  that  the  great  Mr. 
Hare,  utterly  baffled  by  the  handwriting,  had 
sought  relief  for  his  emotions  by  hurling  the 
script  to  the  floor  and  leaping  up  and  down  upon 
it.  After  this  depressing  incident,  Barrie  had  a 
fairer  transcript  of  his  comedy  prepared,  and  took 
it  to  E.  S.  Willard.  In  the  bottom  of  one  of 
Willard's  cavernous  trunks,  along  with  many 
other  scripts  by  other  men,  it  then  set  forth  for 
America. 

It  was  in  1920  that  Barrie's  cryptic  handwrit- 
ing suddenly  became  legible.  Startled  friends 
made  anxious  inquiry  only  to  find  that  because  of 


196        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

an  attack  of  neuritis  in  his  right  arm,  he  was  learn- 
ing to  write  with  his  left  hand.  Indeed,  he  wrote 
"Mary  Rose"  with  his  left  hand  and  some  say 
that  accounted  for  it.  But  that  is  another  story. 
Willard,  in  the  first  four  seasons  of  the  nineties, 
played  only  in  the  United  States,  and  it  was  in 
the  last  week  of  an  engagement  at  the  Star  in 
December,  1892,  that  he  produced  "The  Pro- 
fessor's Love  Story."  On  the  spur  of  the  moment, 
and  with  no  more  than  six  rehearsals,  it  was 
pitched  on  in  place  of  Tennyson's  "The  Cup." 
Willard,  of  course,  was  Professor  Goodwillie. 
The  Lucy  was  Marie  Burroughs  and  Lady  Gild- 
ing was  a  young  and  lustrous  beauty  named 
Maxine  Elliott.  By  that  time  every  one,  even  in 
America,  had  read  or  was  reading  Barrie's  most 
celebrated  novel,  "The  Little  Minister,"  and  an 
eager  audience  awaited  his  first  play  to  reach  New 
York.  The  sale  was  large  though  it  was  that 
nightmare  of  the  managers'  existence,  the  week 
before  Christmas,  in  the  days  before  the  "Do  your 
shopping  early"  slogan  had  taken  the  fine  frenzy 
out  of  the  season.  The  success  on  the  first  night 
was  unmistakable,  and  during  the  curtain  speech 
there  was  thunderous  applause  when  Mr.  Willard 
asked  if  he  might  cable  to  the  author  in  England 
that  his  play  had  won  the  day. 


THE  LEGEND  OF  "PETER  PAN"  197 

If  such  a  message  was  ever  sent  it  must  have 
gone  astray,  for  the  first  tidings  Barrie  had  of  his 
play's  reception,  or,  indeed,  of  its  having  been 
produced  at  all,  came  in  the  form  of  a  friendly 
and  exploratory  note  from  a  stranger  in  New 
York,  one  Charles  Frohman,  who  felicitated  him 
on  "The  Professor's  Love  Story,"  and  inclosed, 
by  way  of  introduction,  the  picture  of  a  young 
and  extremely  insignificant  actress,  of  whom  he 
had  hopes  and  for  whom,  he  hoped,  Mr.  Barrie 
would  some  day  write  a  play.  That  note  was  the 
beginning  of  the  memorable  friendship  between 
Frohman  and  Barrie,  and  the  picture  was  a  photo- 
graph of  Maude  Adams.  It  was  Barrie's  first 
glimpse  of  the  woman  who  in  the  years  that  lay 
ahead  was  to  interpret  for  America,  was  to  be  for 
America  his  Fhcebe  Throssell,  his  Leonora,  his 
Maggie  Wylie,  his  Babbie,  and  his  Peter  Fan. 
That  picture,  the  photograph  of  a  young  Maude 
Adams  with  a  little  round  button  of  an  1892  hat 
insecurely  perched  on  the  top  of  her  head,  still 
stands  on  the  mantel  shelf  in  Barrie's  study  at  3 
Adelphi  Terrace,  sharing  that  small  altar  with  a 
portrait  of  Margaret  Ogilvie,  the  original  manu- 
script of  Henley's  "Invictus,"  and  an  unconscion- 
able number  of  pipes. 

By  the  time  "Peter  Pan"  came  along,  Barrie 


198        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

was  known  the  world  around,  and  yet  even  then 
the  critics  struggled  feebly.  What  eluded  their 
stiff  calipers  was  doubtless  that  quality  which  the 
discerning  John  Corbin  recognized  at  once,  its 
dual  mood  of  innocence  and  knowledge.  You 
will  go  quite  mad  if  you  try  to  decide  whether 
the  play  is  for  children  or  for  grown-ups.  You 
see,  it 's  for  both,  with  something  in  it  for  each. 
"Peter  Pan"  is  not  children  at  play,  but  an  old 
man  smiling — and  smiling  a  little  sadly — as  he 
watches  children  at  play. 

And  the  children  love  it.  There  will  have  to 
be  a  chapter  about  the  "Peter  Pan"  audiences, 
and  you  have  never  really  seen  the  play  if  you 
have  not  attended  a  matinee.  You  must  see  the 
miniature  playgoers  straining  in  their  seats,  break- 
ing the  nurse's  leash  and  swarming  incontinently 
down  the  aisles.  You  must  see  them  in  the  boxes, 
looking  in  the  perfection  of  their  faith,  as  if  at 
any  moment  they  might  attempt  to  fly  out  across 
the  auditorium.  You  must  hear  their  often  em- 
barrassingly premature  rally  to  the  defense  of 
Tinker  Bell  and  hear  the  shout  that  occasionally 
threatens  to  break  up  the  proceedings,  as  when  a 
passionately  interested  Michael  on  the  wrong  side 
of  the  footlights  cries  out  in  friendly  warning: 


THE  LEGEND  OF  "PETER  PAN"  199 

"Watch  out,  Peter,  watch  out !  The  old  parrot's 
poisoned  your  medicine." 

The  historian  must  tell  of  the  little  folks  wait- 
ing gravely  at  the  stage-door  to  ask  for  thimbles, 
and  maybe  he  will  have  access  to  the  countless 
letters  to  Peler  that  have  come  in,  heavy  with 
pennies  sent  trustfully  to  buy  a  pinch  of  fairy 
dust,  which  is  so  necessary  if  you  have  forgotten 
how  to  fly. 

But  the  dearest  friends  of  Peter  Fan  are  among 
the  oldest  living  inhabitants.  Austere  jurists, 
battered  rounders,  famous  editors  and  famous 
playwrights,  slightly  delirious  poets  and  out- 
wardly forbidding  corporation  presidents,  these 
are  in  the  ranks  of  the  devoted.  You  simply  can- 
not recognize  a  Peter  Pantheist  at  sight,  but  when 
you  find  him  reappearing  at  each  engagement  you 
can  begin  to  guess  his  heart  is  in  the  right  place. 

It  would  be  idle  to  pretend  that  everybody  likes 
the  play,  but  its  own  public  is  large  and  so  shame- 
lessly addicted  to  it  that  a  dozen  visits  to  the 
theater  are  as  nothing.  There  are  some  of  us  who 
cannot  hear  the  opening  strains  of  the  music,  who 
cannot  witness  the  first  inordinately  solemn  ap- 
pearance of  the  responsible  Liza,  without  feeling 
an  absurd  desire  to  laugh  and  weep  at  the  same 


200        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

time,  who  cannot  watch  Peter  take  his  silent  stand 
on  guard  outside  the  house  they  built  for  Wendy 
without  a  sense  of  exaltation  that  warms  the  heart 
and  sends  us  fair  uplifted  to  our  homes. 

"The  Legend  of  Teter  Pan'  "  must  have  a 
whole  section  devoted  to  those  who  have  played 
in  it.  There  have  been  successive  broods  of  chil- 
dren, some  leaving  in  the  spring  quite  perfect  in 
their  parts,  but  reappearing  sheepish  in  the 
autumn,  so  grown  up  that  there  is  no  using  them. 
There  has  been  a  line  of  adorable  Lizas,  one  in 
particular  who  enslaved  all  the  company  and  kept 
them  busy  between  scenes  devising  blandishments 
to  win  her  favor.  There  is  the  story  of  her  part 
in  a  New  England  tour  when  some  of  the  May- 
flower  descendants — we  are,  as  Feter  observes, 
nearly  all  of  us  descendants — who  made  a  point 
of  looking  shocked  when  they  trailed  through  the 
private  car  that  carried  the  jolly  "Peter  Pan" 
company.  The  pirates  were  peacefully  playing 
poker,  and  just  to  give  the  strangers  something 
to  be  really  scandalized  about,  they  set  little  Liza 
at  the  table,  piled  some  chips  before  her,  and  put 
into  her  hands  a  deal  of  cards  at  which  she  gazed 
with  such  intense  gravity  that  the  dear  New  Eng- 
landers  had  a  delightful  attack  of  the  horrors. 


THE  LEGEND  OF  'TETER  PAN"  201 

There  must  be  due  account  of  the  annual 
*'Peter  Pan"  engagement  at  the  Duke  of  York's 
and  of  the  actresses — Nina  Boucicault,  Cissie 
Loftus,  Georgette  Cohan,  and  Pauline  Chase — 
who  have  played  Peter  in  London. 

There  must  be  one  long  chapter  of  which  the 
heading  will  be  simply  "Maude  Adams."  The 
legend  of  "Peter  Pan"  is  in  part  the  story  of  the 
winsome  woman  who  alone  has  played  the  part 
in  America.  Barrie  and  Maude  Adams  are  twin 
spirits  that  have  worked  in  charm  for  the  pleasure 
of  unnumbered  thousands.  His  humor  is  her 
humor,  and  the  rueful  strain  in  the  best  of  Barrie 
matched  the  little  wistfulness  which  made  so 
gentle  the  great  gaiety  of  her  playing. 

And,  because  it  was  derived  from  the  same 
source-book  of  all  Barrieisms,  "The  Little  White 
Bird,"  there  would  have  to  be  a  chapter  set  aside 
for  some  account  of  that  even  more  delicate  and 
wistful  Barrie  play,  "A  Kiss  for  Cinderella," 
which,  like  "Peter  Pan,"  was  played  in  America 
by  Maude  Adams  and  which,  until  he  wrote  "The 
Old  Lady  Shows  Her  Medals,"  was  saddest  of 
all  his  writings  for  the  theater. 

For  those  of  us  who  at  "Peter  Pan"  feel  a  cer- 
tain unconquerable  chokiness,  which  lasts  until 


202         SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

Feter  waves  good-by  from  his  house  in  the  sway- 
ing tree-tops,  it  is  difficult  to  weigh  the  pathos  of 
"A  Kiss  for  Cinderella."  It  seems  to  be  com- 
pounded of  one  part  laughter  and  three  parts  un- 
shed tears.  Its  recipe  is  secret,  but  its  source  is 
unmistakable.  If  you  stop  to  think  about  it,  you 
cannot  doubt  for  a  moment  that  the  little  Miss 
Thing  who  pretends  she  is  Cinderella  is  our  old 
friend  lre7ie^  sometime  Nursemaid  Extraordinary 

to  David  A ,  in  the  purlieus  of  Kensington 

Gardens. 

Barrie's  Cinderella  is  a  little  drudge  whose 
name  is  Jane  and  who  is  vaguely  and  scornfully 
set  down  on  the  program  as  Miss  Thing.  She  pre- 
tends she  is  Cinderella  so  that  she  may  transform 
her  bleak  existence  by  the  brave  day-dreams  that 
— luckily  for  her — are  more  real  to  her  than  life 
itself.  She  comes  out  of  the  slums  of  London — 
not  far  from  Drury  Lane,  you  wager — where,  with 
her  watering-can,  she  has  carefully  brought  her- 
self up.  Her  speech  is  cockney,  but — in  honor 
of  Thrums — there  is  a  Scotch  forebear  somewhere, 
for  the  fine  Scotch  words  and  phrases  still  stick 
to  her  like  bits  of  egg-shell  to  a  chicken.  By  day 
she  does  the  cleaning  in  a  studio  building  for  one- 
and-seven  a  week.    She  could  see  her  way  clearer 


THE  LEGEND  OF  "PETER  PAN"  203 

if  it  were  one-and-nine,  but  it  is  one-and-seven. 
By  night  she  presides  over  a  slum  hostel  of  her 
own,  a  shanty  Penny  Friend  which  she  calls 
Celeste  et  Cie.,  a  shining  name  copied  from  some 
grand  shop-window  in  Bond  Street.  There  she 
will  fit  you  or  shave  you  or  dose  you  for  a  penny, 
and  there,  in  mysterious  home-made  cradles,  she 
shelters  four  orphan  babies.  Cinderella  is  the  sort 
to  do  her  bit  in  war  time,  and  all  the  hospitals 
had  coldly  declined  her  services  as  a  nurse.  She 
has  a  bluejacket's  baby  and  a  French  baby,  and  a 
Belgian  baby,  and  if  you  must  know,  a  baby 
named  Gretchen  whom  she  vainly  tries  to  pass  off 
as  a  Swiss,  but  who  bites  the  policeman  and  in- 
dulges in  other  forms  of  Schrecklichkeit^  such  as 
sticking  out  her  tongue.  Cinderella  is  a  stout 
patriot  and  in  panicky  fear  of  arrest  for  conceal- 
ing an  alien,  but  Gretchen  had  been  left  over  and 
she  was  the  littlest  of  all.  So  she  had  no  choice. 
■  And  there  each  night,  after  the  penny  customers 
have  gone,  she  tells  the  children  the  story  of 
Cinderella  they  all  knew  in  their  own  nurseries, 
whatever  their  home  and  whatever  their  tongue. 
So  thoroughly  are  tjiey  persuaded  she  is  Ci7iderella 
that  she  feels  desperately  her  powers  of  make- 
believe  will  be  exhausted  if  the  invite  to  the  ball 


204        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

does  not  come  pretty  soon.  So,  when  the  tired, 
underfed,  feverish,  valiant  little  drudge  goes  to 
sleep  that  night  in  the  street  while  she  is  waiting 
for  the  fairy  godmother  that  never  comes,  it  is 
small  wonder  that  her  delirium  transports  her  to 
the  ball. 

It  is  a  wonderful  dream  and  a  wonderful  ball, 
a  scene  of  glory  staged  by  Cinderellds  imagina- 
tion and  limited  only  by  the  pathetic  range  of  her 
experience.  Everything  is  golden.  On  golden 
rocking-chairs  the  king  and  queen  (from  a  dingy 
pack  of  cards)  hold  court  and  later  dispense  ice- 
cream in  golden  cones  from  a  golden  push-cart. 
It  is  not  Cinderella' s  fault  that  when  she  wants 
to  create  a  sumptuous  largesse  she  can  think  of 
nothing  more  festive — heaven  forgive  us  all — 
than  a  pompous  and  possibly  political  charity 
hand-out.  You  know  where  she  caught  those 
phrases  which  the  king,  in  a  surprising  White- 
chapel  accent,  delivers  benevolently  from  his 
throne : 

My  loyal  subjects,  all  'ail!  I  am  as  proud  of  you  as 
you  are  of  me.  It  gives  me  and  my  good  lady  much 
pleasure  to  see  you  'ere  by  special  invite,  feasting  at  our 
expense.  There  is  a  paper  bag  for  each,  containing  two 
sandwiches,  buttered  on  both  sides ;  a  piece  of  cake,  a 
hard-boiled  egg,  and  an  apple  or  banana. 


THE  LEGEND  OF  "PETER  PAN"  205 

Then  comes  Cinderella.  The  glory  of  her  com- 
ing she  had  foreseen,  and  to  the  children  on  many 
a  weary  night  described  it  all  in  words  like  these : 

There  are  blasts  on  the  trumpet  and  loud  roars.  Make 
way  for  the  Lady  Cinderella.  That 's  what  you  're  called 
at  royal  balls.  Then  loud  huzzas  is  heard  from  outside 
from  the  excited  popu-lace.  For  by  this  time  the  fame 
of  my  beauty  has  spread  like  wildfire  through  the  streets 
and  folks  is  hanging  out  at  windows  and  climbing  lamp- 
posts to  catch  a  sight  of  me. 

So  it  is  she  arrives  in  her  dream.  Then  there 
is  the  contest  with  the  rival  beauties  for  the  hand 
and  heart  of  the  prince  (who  strangely  resembles 
Our  Foliceman).  You  may  be  sure  she  vanquishes 
them  all,  Carmencita^  Mona  Lisa,  the  Duchess  of 
Devonshire,  the  Girl  imth  the  Muff,  even  Greuze's 
lovely  girl  with  the  broken  pitcher,  beauties  all 
from  the  studio  wall  she  had  dusted  that  day. 
Fairer  they  may  be,  but  have  they  perfect  feet? 
And  what  are  uppers  without  perfect  feet?  What, 
indeed? 

So  Cinderella  and  the  prince  are  married  by  the 
bishop-penguin,  and  they  are  all  dancing  like 
street  children  to  the  music  of  the  hurdy-gurdies 
when  the  stroke  of  midnight  brings  the  dream  to 
an  end  and  Cinderella  wakes  in  a  hospital.  An 
angel  in  streamers  is  standing  there  with  a  boiled 


2o6        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

egg  on  a  tray.  Cinderella  thinks  at  first  it  is  the 
egg  you  always  get  with  your  tea  in  the  work- 
house the  day  before  you  die;  but  there  is  no  work- 
house for  Barrie's  Cinderella.  Rather  is  she 
swamped  by  the  attentions  of  the  adoring  con- 
valescent Tommies,  but  she  waits  for  Our  Police- 
man. She  has  a  letter  from  him  which,  in  her 
poor  opinion,  is  nothing  less  than  a  love-letter. 
See,  he  has  said:  "There  are  thirty-four  police- 
men sitting  in  this  room,  but  I  would  rather  have 
you,  my  dear."  And  when  he  comes,  this  ro- 
mantical  policeman,  and  proposes  (twice,  at  her 
request),  she  accepts  him  in  radiant  words  she  had 
composed  and  memorized  in  the  dreary  days  when 
her  only  light  was  just  the  valiant  hope  that  some 
day  out  of  somewhere  a  prince  would  come  along. 
It  was  a  bit  she  had  been  "keeping  handy" — bless 
her. 

It  is  this  valiant  quality  in  Cinderella  that  wins 
us  utterly.  She  is  so  preposterously  gay  and 
and  perky  in  her  "brave  apparel  of  the  very  poor." 
She  is  so  absurdly  cheerful  when  she  has  no 
earthly  business  to  be.  It  is  this  spiritual  valiance 
— the  essential  thing  in  the  play — that  Miss 
Adams  expressed  to  your  heart's  content.  Others 
in  the  company — notably  Norman  Trevor  (whose 


THE  LEGEND  OF  "PETER  PAN"  207 

performance  was  uncommonly  fine),  Morton 
Selten,  and  Robert  Peyton  Carter — were  all  you 
could  ask,  but  in  the  hands  of  Maude  Adams  was 
the  heart  of  the  matter.  Long  ago  the  felicitous 
Arthur  Ruhl  wrote  of  "the  dauntless  frailty  of 
Maude  Adams."  It  is  the  dauntless  frailty  of 
Cinderella  that  almost  breaks  your  heart. 

Here  once  more  is  the  unutterable  pathos  of 
those  who  have  to  imagine  their  happiness  or  go 
without.  Barrie  may  have  taken  a  leaf  out  of 
"The  Poor  Little  Rich  Girl"  for  his  dream  scene, 
but  the  idea  of  his  play  is  the  idea  of  that  pen- 
sive comedy,  "The  Phantom  Rival,"  and  of  that 
pitiful  tragedy,  "  'Op-o'-my-Thumb,"  which 
Miss  Adams  played  here  and  which,  not  by  coin- 
cidence, was  played  in  London  by  Hilda  Trevel- 
yan.  "  'Op-o'-my-Thumb,"  you  remember,  tells 
the  story  of  the  little  laundry  drudge  who  has  a 
splendid  romance  with  an  imaginary  lover  which 
lasts  until  the  guiltless  lay-figure  for  this  creation 
chances  to  cross  her  path  and  dispel  the  illusion. 
It  is  the  end  of  her  day-dreams.  She  can  pretend 
no  more,  and  you  leave  her  huddled  there  under 
the  laundry  table,  a  tragic  figure,  sobbing  bitterly. 
Things  come  about  more  happily  for  Cinderella. 

Of  course,  Cinderella  is  maternal.    In  that  she 


2o8        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

is  more  thoroughly  a  Barrie  heroine  than  Babbie 
herself.  Rather  does  she  belong  with  Elspelk, 
Maggie  Wylie^  Wendy^  and  Irene^  sisters  all  of 
Margaret  Ogilvie^  who  used  to  laugh  till  she  wept 
because  her  wonderful  son  could  not  keep  her  out 
of  his  books.  Cinderella,  then,  is  one  of  the 
mothers  of  the  world.  She  wants  to  take  care  of 
everybody.  She  is  forever  brushing  the  ashes  off 
the  artist  in  the  studio.  Her  first  impulse  at  the 
sight  of  that  romantical  policeman  is  to  run.  The 
next  is  to  stay  and  clean  his  belt — with  spit.  She 
is  intensely  jealous  of  the  Venus  de  Milo,  for  all 
her  large  feet,  but  she  is  inclined  to  be  scornful  of 
the  theory  that  that  marble  lady  ever  held  a  baby 
in  her  arms. 

"If  I  had  lost  my  baby,  I  would  n't  have  been 
found  with  that  pleased  look  on  my  face,  not  in  a 
thousand  years,"  she  avers. 

The  artist  ventures  that  when  her  arms  were 
broken,  she  might  have  had  to  drop  the  baby. 

*'She  could  have  up  with  her  knee  and  ketched 
it,"  says  Cinderella. 

So  now  you  know  why  the  knee  of  Venus  is 
thrust  forward.  It  is  a  characteristic  Barrie  touch, 
as  characteristic  as  the  hominess  of  Cinder- 
ella. 


THE  LEGEND  OF  "PETER  PAN"  209 

"You  can't  be  with  her  many  minutes,"  the 
artist  swears,  "before  you  begin  thinking  of  your 
early  days." 

Small  wonder  then  that  Our  'Policeman  is  un- 
easy when  he  finds  himself  talking  immediately 
of  his  childhood  in  Badgery,  and  no  wonder  at  all 
that  before  the  play  is  done  he  finds  the  heart  of 
him  crying  out  to  walk  with  her  by  Badgery 
Water. 

For  that  is  the  romance  that  comes  at  last  to 
the  little  waif  that  first  walked  into  Barrie's  pages 
years  ago  in  a  volume  of  forgotten  short  stories, 
now  hopelessly  out  of  print.  The  first  was  an  en- 
chanting thing  called  "Two  of  Them"  and  the 
second  was  "The  Inconsiderate  Waiter,"  wherein, 
if  memory  serves,  a  little  girl  stood  recklessly  in 
the  street  beneath  his  club  window  and  signaled 
to  him  that  his  waiter's  wife  was  better  that  day 
and  conveyed,  by  astonishingly  graphic  panto- 
mime, the  further  information  that  she  had  eaten 
all  the  tapiocar. 

"The  Inconsiderate  Waiter"  became,  in  time, 
a  chapter  in  "The  Little  White  Bird,"  and  Irene^ 
disporting  an  outrageous  bonnet  Barrie  had 
bought  her  in  an  off  moment,  became  David^s 
nursemaid  in  Kensington  Gardens.    Read  a  page 


210         SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

or  two  and  you  can  see  how  clearly  she  was  the 
inspiration  for  "A  Kiss  for  Cinderella": 

As  you  shall  see,  I  invented  many  stories  for  David, 
practising  the  telling  of  them  by  my  fireside  as  if  they 
were  conjuring  feats,  while  Irene  knew  only  one,  but 
she  told  it  as  never  has  any  other  fairy-tale  been  told 
in  my  hearing.  It  was  the  prettiest  of  them  all,  and  was 
recited  by  the  heroine. 

"Why  were  the  king  and  queen  not  at  home?"  David 
would  ask  her  breathlessly. 

"I  suppose,"  said  Irene,  thinking  it  out,  "they  was 
away  buying  the  victuals." 

She  always  told  the  story  gazing  into  vacancy,  so  that 
David  thought  it  was  really  happening  somewhere  up 
the  Broad  Walk,  and  when  she  came  to  its  great  mo- 
ments, her  little  bosom  heaved.  Never  shall  I  forget 
the  concentrated  scorn  with  which  the  prince  said  to 
the  sisters,  "Neither  of  you  ain't  the  one  what  wore  the 
glass  slipper." 

"And  then — and  then — and  then — "  said  Irene,  not 
artistically,  to  increase  the  suspense,  but  because  it  was 
all  so  glorious  to  her. 

"Tell  me — tell  me  quick,"  cried  David,  though  he 
knew  the  tale  by  heart. 

"She  sits  down  like,"  said  Irene,  trembling  in  second 
sight,  "and  she  tries  on  the  glass  slipper;  and  it  fits 
her  to  a  T  and  then  the  prince,  he  cries  in  a  ringing 
voice,  'This  here  is  my  true  Love,  Cinderella,  what  now 
I  makes  my  lawful  wedded  wife.'  " 

Then  she  would  come  out  of  her  dream  and  look  round 
at  the  grandees  of  the  Gardens  with  an  extraordinary 
elation.  "Her,  as  was  only  a  kitchen  drudge,"  she  would 
say  in  a  strange,  soft  voice  and  with  shining  eyes,  "but 
was  true  and  faithful  in  word  and  deed,  such  was  her 
reward." 


THE  LEGEND  OF  "PETER  PAN"  211 

I  am  sure  that,  had  the  fairy  godmother  appeared 
just  then  and  touched  Irene  with  her  wand,  David  would 
have  been  interested  rather  than  astonished.  As  for 
myself,  I  believe  I  have  surprised  this  little  girl's  secret. 
She  knows  there  are  no  fairy  godmothers  nowadays,  but 
she  hopes  that  if  she  is  always  true  and  faithful  she  may 
some  day  turn  into  a  lady  in  word  and  deed,  like  the 
mistress  whom  she  adores. 

It  is  a  dead  secret,  a  Drury  Lane  child's  romance ;  but 
what  an  amount  of  heavy  artillery  will  be  brought  to 
bear  against  it  in  this  sad  London  of  ours.  Not  so  much 
chance  for  her,  I  suppose. 

Good  luck  to  you,  Irene. 

And  good  luck  to  you^  Cinderella.  Mr.  Bodie 
is  right.  We  can't  be  with  you  many  minutes 
before  we  begin  thinking  of  our  early  days. 


XIV 
IT  WAS   "TRILBY" 

THERE  may  in  time  to  come  be  another  play 
that  will  cause  the  hubbub  which  "Trilby" 
stirred  in  America,  the  sense  of  expectancy  and 
the  general  impression  that  any  one  who  had  not 
seen  it  the  night  before  was  at  least  planning  to 
see  it  the  next  afternoon.  It  is  probably  true  that 
^'Within  the  Law"  and  "Peg  o'  My  Heart" 
reached  more  audiences  in  the  end,  and  it  is  cer- 
tainly true  that  the  dramatizer  of  "Trilby"  re- 
ceived nothing  like  the  $750,000  which  has 
already  been  paid  in  royalties  to  the  author  of 
"Peg."  But  in  its  simpler  and  less  obstructed  day 
the  play  made  from  Du  Maurier's  novel  was  sim- 
ply prodigious.  Certainly  no  such  success  was 
ever  scored  by  a  play  so  hastily,  so  unimagina- 
tively, and  so  artlessly  put  together.  For  it  was 
carried  along  not  by  its  own  strength,  but  like  a 
cork  on  the  wave  of  that  unprecedented  and  since 
unequaled  enthusiasm  which  was  the  portion  of 

Du    Maurier's    fascinating    story    in    America. 

212 


IT  WAS  ^TRILBY"  213 

**Trilby"  was  a  best-seller  and  something  more. 
It  was  more  than  a  favorite.  It  was  a  craze,  an 
obsession.    America  was  "Trilby"  mad. 

"There  have  been  subsequent  books  which  have 
far  outstripped  'Trilby'  in  the  matter  of  sales." 
Thus  some  one — doubtless  Mr.  Maurice  himself 
— writing  in  "The  Bookman"  a  year  or  so  ago: 
"Yet  when  regarded  from  all  points,  the  story, 
introducing  Miss  O'Ferrall^  the  Three  Musketeers 
of  the  Brushy  and  the  sinister  Svengali^  is  the  most 
complete  literary  success  of  any  book  written  in 
the  English  language  in  the  last  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tur}^" 

When  3'ou  realize  how  rarely  you  see  a  copy 
of  the  story  on  the  casual  book-shelf,  how  few  the 
new-comers  to  the  libraries  and  stalls  who  ever 
ask  for  "Trilby,"  it  is  hard  to  believe  it  was  only 
twenty-five  years  ago  that  everybody  was  reading 
it — literally  everybody.  Small  boys  in  knee- 
breeches  devoured  it ;  dear  old  ladies,  who  had 
never  heard  of  the  Ouartier  Latin  in  all  their 
blessed  days,  pored  over  its  pages  with  infinite 
relish.  It  was  read  and  enjoyed  by  the  critical 
and  the  uncritical.  You  heard  its  names  and 
phrases  on  every  side. 

Svengali  was  then  and  is  still  the  best  known 


214         SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

character  in  modern  English  fiction — with  the  pos- 
sible exception  of  Sherlock  Holmes.  And  just  as 
the  great  sleuth  of  Baker  Street  is  a  familiar  name 
and  figure  even  to  our  unhappy  fellow-creatures 
who  know  nothing  of  a  detective  story's  fascina- 
tion, so  Svengali  and  the  other  folk  of  "Trilby" 
were  at  least  acquaintances  of  those  who  had  never 
gone  so  far  as  to  buy  or  borrow  a  copy  of  Du 
Maurier's  book. 

There  was  simply  no  escaping  them.  It  was 
Trilby  this  and  Trilby  that.  There  were  Trilby 
hats  and  of  course  there  were  Trilby  shoes.  Trios 
of  young  men  rather  liked  the  idea  of  so  dressing 
and  promenading  arm  in  arm  that  passers-by  on 
the  avenue  would  catch  a  suggestion  of  the  Three 
Musketeers  of  the  Brush.  "Trilby"  was  read 
aloud  in  drawing-rooms — to  music.  There  were 
Trilby  tableaux  of  painful  memory.  There  were 
"songs  and  scenes"  from  "Trilby."  This  restau- 
rant sold  Trilby  sausages,  and  that  confectioner 
served  his  ice-cream  from  a  mold  that  aspired  to 
the  lines  of  Trilby s  left  foot.  Virginia  Harned, 
the  first  actress  to  play  the  role  anywhere,  used 
to  tell  of  finding  on  the  menu  one  day  no  less  a 
dish  than  pigs'-feet  a  la  Trilby. 

There  were  burlesques  without  end,  from  Her- 


IT  WAS  'TRILBY"  21  j 

bert's  "Trilby"  at  the  Garrick,  with  a  monstrous 
Svengali  who  could  hypnotize  even  the  table  on 
which  he  afterward  died  like  an  overlarge  and  ani- 
mated doily,  to  the  "Twilbe"  the  art  students 
gave  at  the  Academy  in  Philadelphia  in  the  days 
when  such  temporary  Thespians  as  C.  M.  Wil- 
liamson and  Everett  Shinn  could  be  impressed — 
probably  without  much  of  a  struggle — into  the 
cast  and  the  Gecko  was  Glackens  (W.  J.) 

If  you  rushed  for  surcease  to  the  circus,  you 
found  a  Trilby  riding  bareback  with  a  particularly 
venomous  Svengali  cracking  the  whip.  Were  you 
a  patron  of  the  Dime  Museum  in  Eighth  Avenue? 
Then  you  were  asked  to  select  and  vote  on  the 
handsomest  of  "Twenty  Trilbys — Twenty." 
There  were  sermons  on  "Trilby,"  and  there  is  the 
actual  record  of  a  Trilby  Coterie  and  Chowder 
Club,  of  which  other  detail  than  the  name  has 
passed  mercifully  into  oblivion.  Out  in  Denver 
some  one  tried  desperately  to  make  off  with  the 
play  on  the  unsubstantial  grounds  that  it  was  a 
mere  adaptation  of  Nodier's  old  "Lutin  d'Argail," 
and  on  the  other  side  of  Brookl}Ti  Bridge,  in 
the  midst  of  a  family  discussion  on  the  morals  of 
"Trilby,"  a  woman  went  so  far  as  to  break  her 
husband's  head. 


2i6        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

Such  was  the  vogue  of  a  book  that  interested 
with  its  story,  aroused  curiosity  by  means  of  hyp- 
notism, and  fascinated  with  its  engaging  account 
of  the  Paris  Du  Maurier  knew  and  loved,  with  its 
happy  picture  of  the  gay,  brave  camaraderie  of 
the  life  in  the  rickety  studio  overlooking  the  Place 
St.  Anatole  des  Arts.  At  the  time  there  were  those 
who  predicted  that  the  life  of  the  book  would  be 
brief;  there  are  those  who  say  now  that  it  has 
gone  forever  to  the  limbo  of  forgotten  stories, 
along  with  "David  Harum"  and  "Richard  Car- 
vel" and  "Janice  Meredith."  But  there  are  some 
of  us  who  suspect  that  the  future  holds  out  for 
Du  Maurier' s  most  famous  novel  the  promise  of 
another  life,  though  in  some  bosoms,  I  must  ad- 
mit, there  seems  to  burn  no  ember  of  the  old  en- 
thusiasm. I  myself  was  all  aglow  one  afternoon 
when  I  came  upon  the  original  scripts  of  "Trilby" 
and  "Peter  Ibbetson"  in  the  manuscript-room  of 
the  Morgan  Library,  shelved  there  side  by  side 
with  the  portfolios  which  contain  all  the  dear, 
remembered  drawings  their  author  did  to  illus- 
trate them.  I  tried  at  once  to  recruit  as  a  fellow- 
witness  of  these  glories  no  less  a  person  than  Amy 
Lowell,  who  was  delving  enviously  near  by  in 
some  Keats  manuscripts.     "O  Miss  Lowell,"  I 


IT  WAS  "TRILBY"  217 

said,  ''would  n't  it  thrill  you  a  little  just  to  hold 
the  manuscript  of  'Trilby'  in  your  hands ^'* 
"No,"  said  Miss  Lowell  severely,  "it  would  n't." 

But  when  the  book  was  new  she  was  out- 
weighed.    "Trilby"  possessed  the  country. 

Riding  on  such  a  tide.  Potter's  dramatization 
could  hardly  have  failed  of  success.  And  for  a 
time — not  a  particularly  long  time — it  knew 
enormous  popularity.  At  one  period  there  were 
no  less  than  nine  companies  touring  under  one 
management. 

The  production  was  A.  M.  Palmer's.  He  had 
precious  little  faith  in  it  and  was  quite  discon- 
solate throughout  the  period  of  rehearsal.  It  is 
often  told  of  Du  Maurier  that  he  himself  had  had 
no  faith  in  his  ability  or  chances  as  a  novelist 
when,  after  a  long  and  busy  life  as  a  draftsman,  he 
turned  his  pen  to  the  writing  of  stories.  Indeed, 
he  tried  to  give  the  plot  of  "Trilby"  to  Henry 
James,  and  even  when  the  book  was  done  he  non- 
chalantly disposed  of  the  dramatic  rights  for  a 
consideration  of  £50.  They  were  returned  to  him, 
however,  as  part  of  the  generosity  he  experienced 
from  the  hands  of  his  American  publishers. 

The  success  of  his  play  was  established  at  its 
first  night.    That  was  in  Boston,  and  the  first  New 


2i8        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

York  performance  followed  within  six  weeks. 
The  premiere  was  a  box-office  triumph.  There 
was  such  a  crowd  that  Beerbohm  Tree  had  to  be 
content  with  a  gallery  box,  from  which,  doubt- 
less, he  almost  fell  in  the  abstraction  of  plan- 
ning his  own  version  of  Svengali's  death  for 
the  Haymarket.  There  was  so  much  excitement 
that  Virginia  Harned  made  her  first  exit  through 
a  window  instead  of  a  door,  thus  treating  an 
enraptured  audience  to  the  spectacle  of  her  de- 
parture across  the  Latin  Quarter  house-tops.  It 
was  lots  of  fun. 

There  were  some  good  names,  by  the  way,  in 
that  cast  Mr.  Palmer  assembled.  Here  it  is  as  to 
the  more  important  roles : 

Taffy Burr  Mcintosh 

The  Laird John  Glendinning 

Little  Billee Alfred  Hickman 

Svengali Wilton  Lackaye 

Gecko Robert  Paton  Gibbs 

Zou-Zou Leo   Ditrichstein 

Trilby Virginia   Harned 

Madame  Vinard Mathilde  Cottrelly 

Zou-Zou  was  Mr.  Ditrichstein's  first  conspicu- 
ous hit — the  real  beginning  of  an  interesting 
career.  The  memory  of  his  "Oh,  la-la-la-la  I" 
still  clings  to  him.    It  was  part  of  his  part  to  bring 


IT  WAS  "TRILBY"  219 

flowers  to  the  dying  Trilby,  and  when,  after  some 
weeks,  he  took  to  substituting  for  the  florist's 
nightly  boutonniere  some  blossoms  cut  from 
plants  kept  in  his  wilting  dressing-room,  they  be- 
gan gradually  to  deteriorate  and  finally,  in  the 
midst  of  Trilby's  fourth-act  pathos,  Miss  Hamed 
whispered  to  him:  "These  are  getting  rottener 
every  evening."  It  threatened  to  disrupt  the  per- 
formance and  Zou-Zou  still  likes  to  tell  of  the 
night  Trilby  almost  died  of  laughing  instead  of 
dying  of  heart  disease  and  Svengali. 

Beerbohm  Tree  did  Svengali  in  London,  and 
out  of  the  incredible  profits  of  that  venture  he 
built  for  himself  His  Majesty's  Theater,  the 
same  great  playhouse  which,  through  the  acciden- 
tal circumstance  that  he  had  mistrustfully  leased 
it  to  a  play  called  "Mecca"  on  the  eve  of  his 
death,  bequeathed  to  his  family  an  immense  for- 
tune, for  all  Tree's  own  prodigal  and  magnificent 
ways.  The  play  became  a  tradition  in  the  Tree 
family,  and  all  his  children  give  occasional  evi- 
dences of  having  been  brought  up  on  it.  I  remem- 
ber once  when  Delysia  was  singing  "Malbrouck'* 
in  London  I  made  conversation  by  saying  to  Viola 
Tree,  "That  was  Trilby's  song."  It  did  not  make 
very  good  conversation,  for  she  answered  coldly. 


220        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

"No,  it  was  n*t,"  and  in  the  ensuing  discussion  ex- 
plained that  she  had  played  Trilby  and  ought  to 
know.  We  wagered,  I  remember,  a  set  of  Henry 
James's  letters  on  the  question.  I  was  firm  and 
told  her  I  could  turn  to  the  very  page  of  the  book 
on  which,  in  scattered  stanzas,  the  song  unfolded. 
"Oh,"  said  Miss  Tree,  a  little  taken  aback,  and  I 
gathered  that  she  meant  thereby  that  she  had  for- 
gotten there  ivas  a  book  before  the  play.  I  have 
yet  to  receive  the  Henry  James  letters. 

In  the  first  London  cast  Gerald  Du  Maurier, 
then  a  young  actor  in  his  third  season  on  the 
stage,  played  Gecko.  Tree  was  forever  reviving 
it,  as,  I  fancy,  Lackaye  would  have  done  here  had 
he,  too,  been  an  actor-manager,  with  his  own  say 
in  the  theater.  Indeed,  when  a  communistically 
organized  company  of  actors  assembled  late  in 
1921  under  the  name  of  the  National  Players  and 
invaded  New  York  with  the  promise  of  a  consid- 
erable repertory  of  plays,  it  was  observed  with 
some  amusement  that  they  elected  to  start  off 
with  "Trilby."  Lackaye  was  a  member  of  that 
company,  and  it  required  no  vast  amount  of  in- 
sight to  imagine  the  first  meeting  of  the  National 
Players,  the  first  tentative  question,  "Well,  what 
shall  we  choose  for  our  first  play?"  and  a  monoto- 


IT  WAS  "TRILBY"  221 

nously  recurrent  vote  cast  by  Lackaye  for 
"Trilby"  until  at  last  every  one  broke  down  and 
consented. 

But  there  have  been  magnificent  revivals  in 
America,  too.  Notably,  there  was  a  splendiferous 
revival  in  1915  and  also  a  brief  one  made  at  the 
New  Amsterdam  ten  years  before.  Again  Miss 
Harned  as  the  Trilby,  again  Lackaye  dying,  head 
down,  eyes  popping,  over  the  table.  Again  the 
cheers.  The  Palmer  cast,  as  printed  above,  was 
left  intact  save  that  now  the  Gecko  was  E.  W. 
Morrison  and  William  Courtenay  the  Little 
Billee. 

And  this  "Trilby"  memorandum  shall  close 
with  a  memory  of  that  revival  of  May,  1905,  a 
reminder  of  a  most  amusing  episode  which  came 
as  a  rich  reward  at  the  end  of  the  big  act.  The 
curtain  rose  and  fell,  rose  and  fell,  and  then  rose 
with  that  pause  which  means  the  curtain  speech. 
It.  had  been  loudly  but  unspecifically  demanded. 
Mr.  Lackaye  and  Miss  Harned  started  forward. 
There  was  an  embarrassed  hesitation,  a  pause,  and 
the  curtain  fell.  It  rose  again.  Again,  in  response 
to  the  continued  cries  of  "Speech,  speech,"  each 
star  made  for  the  center  of  the  stage.  Each  wav- 
ered uncertainly.    There  was  a  deferential  dead- 


222        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

lock.  The  curtain  fell.  It  rose  again,  but  this 
time  Miss  Harned  gracefully  stepped  aside  and 
Mr.  Lackaye  was  left  to  say  how  kind,  how  very 
kind,  every  one  had  been.  Which  was  true,  but 
who  shall  ever  say  for  whom  those  curtain  calls 
were  meant — whose  curtain  speech  was  wanted  *? 


XV 

"PALMY  DAYS" 

OF  recent  plays  one  which  charmed  and  enter- 
tained me  much  more  than  it  seemed  to 
charm  and  entertain  any  one  else  was  a  fondly 
written  comedy  called  "Palmy  Days,"  which 
Augustus  Thomas  brought  to  New  York  like  a 
voice  out  of  the  past.  An  account  of  it  may  not 
be  out  of  place  in  these  pages  because  it  will  serve 
to  illustrate  how  much  extra  enjoyment  may  be 
derived  just  from  poking  about  back-stage  to  see 
from  what  sources  and  by  what  accidents  a  play 
may  chance  to  take  its  final  form  in  New  York. 
The  story  of  "Palmy  Days"  does  suggest  how 
plays  happen  in  our  theater. 

California  in  the  raw  and  turbulent  fifties,  the 
Far  West  in  the  days  of  the  vigilantes  and  of  lone- 
some, swift-shooting  men,  grown  rich  and  reck- 
less with  new  struck  pay-dirt,  dusty  saddle-bags, 
heavy  with  the  winnings  of  last  night's  faro  game, 
bloodhounds  baying  ominously  up  the  trail,  and 

the  alkali  desert,  with  its  lone  path  marked  by 

223 


224        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

wagon  junk  and  bones — all  this  color  and  flavor 
of  the  Bret  Harte  stories  was  in  "Palmy  Days." 

The  scene  is  Lone  Tree — not  far,  as  the  imagi- 
nation flies,  from  Roaring  Camp — and  the  story 
unfolds  in  Mrs.  Curley's  bar,  which,  considering 
the  number  of  times  they  shoot  up  the  bars  at 
Arroya  and  Alta  Vista  and  Red  Gulch,  is  a  regu- 
lar scandal  for  its  respectability.  There  the  com- 
manding figure  in  the  community  is  a  mighty 
miner  with  a  patriarchal  beard  and  a  memory  as 
full  of  quotations  as  "Hamlet,"  one  Cassius  M. 
McBrayer,  known  among  all  the  folk  of  that  trail 
as  good  old  Kaintuck. 

McBrayer^  embodied  with  great  skill  and  quite 
unrecognizable  humanity  by  Wilton  Lackaye,  has 
the  echoes  of  old  greenrooms  in  all  his  speech  and 
the  memory  of  fine  old  bosom-beating  actors  in  his 
every  step  and  gesture.  He  had  not  really  been  an 
actor  himself,  but  he  had  been  Edwin  Forrest's 
dresser  and  he  used  to  tell  the  chuckling  crowd  in 
Ma  Curley^s  bar  that,  though  he  had  made  only 
one  appearance  on  the  stage  in  all  his  life,  on  that 
single  occasion  he  got  more  applause  and  more 
laughter  and  tears  in  a  minute  than  Forrest  ever 
got  in  an  entire  season.  Handkerchiefs  were 
waved  at  him.     Fine  ladies  turned  to  men  they 


"PALMY  DAYS"  22? 

had  never  spoken  to  before  and  beat  them  on  the 
back.  Even  an  old  wardrobe  woman  kissed  him 
in  the  exhilaration  of  that  great  occasion. 

That  was  when  Forrest  used  him  to  enter  King 
Richard's  tent  with  the  line :  "A  gentleman  who 
says  his  name  is  Stanley  awaits  without."  The 
stage-struck  dresser  went  without  his  dinner  to 
practise  this  exacting  role  and  had  it  letter-perfect. 
But,  when  he  came  on,  there  was  the  dread  For- 
rest glaring  at  him,  there  were  the  bewildering 
footlights,  the  people,  the  crowded  dress-circle, 
and  the  gallery  with  white  faces  leaning  out  of  it. 
He  stammered,  reeled,  stuck,  and  all  that  came 
from  his  trembling  lips,  the  automatic  repetition 
of  something  he  had  had  to  say  a  thousand  and 
one  times  to  the  amatory  tragedian,  was  the  price- 
less and  telltale  line:  "There's  a  lady  down- 
stairs." 

Shortly  after  that  inauspicious  debut,  young 
McBrayer  had  become  convinced  that  Forrest  was 
the  father  of  the  baby  his  wife  was  expecting. 
So  out  he  cleared  to  roam  the  world  and  show  up 
after  many  adventures  as  Kaintuck  in  Lone  Tree. 
The  first  act  of  "Palmy  Days"  finds  him  part- 
owner  of  the  richest  claim  on  the  trail,  for  he  and 
his  young  pardner,   Davy   Crockett    Woodford^ 


226        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

have  struck  pay  dirt  in  the  Metamora.  It  finds 
him  rumbling  and  uneasy  because  Davy  has  gone 
mad  for  love  of  the  Cricket. 

The  Cricket  is  the  young  star  of  a  barn-storm- 
ing troupe  consisting  of  herself,  her  mother  (a 
square-jawed  tragedy  queen),  and  her  stepfather, 
the  blackface  banjo  king,  who  vamps  and  revamps 
George  Christy's  stuff  for  the  mining-camps  of 
the  new  California.  The  Cricket  is  another  Lotta, 
and  as  she  dances  the  longhorns  throw  dust  and 
hard  money  and  watches  at  her  feet  just  as  later 
they  were  to  throw  their  gold  and  their  hearts  at 
the  feet  of  Lotta  when  the  Far  West  was  young. 

It  is  a  comically  rude  and  primitive  entertain- 
ment staged  there  on  the  improvised  platform  in 
Ma  Curlefs  bar  for  the  delectation  of  Big  Lit 
and  Bud  Farrell  and  Ledyenworth  and  Texas 
and  Fargo  Bill  and  One-eyed  Conover  and  all 
the  rest;  but  while  the  Cricket  is  casting  wistful 
eyes  at  handsome,  moonstruck  Davy  Woodford, 
her  mother,  knowing  they  knocked  them  cold  in 
Omaha  and  Kansas  City,  dreams  of  further  tri- 
umphs in  the  East,  in  New  York,  even  in  London 

The  climax  comes  when  Kaintuck,  bent  on  res- 
cuing Davy  from  the  toils  of  this  painted  crea- 
ture, recognizes  her  as  his  own  daughter — unmis- 


"PALMY  DAYS"  227 

takably  his  own  daughter,  for  she  is  the  living  spit 
of  Susan  Blackburn  McBrayer,  his  mother,  whose 
portrait,  painted  on  ivory  by  Stuart,  is  all  he  has 
clung  to  through  the  years.  There  follows,  of 
course,  a  turbulent  scene  in  the  audience  and  then 
a  scene  of  reunion  behind  the  curtains.  The  tra- 
gedy queen  has  the  vapors  at  once.  "He's  your 
damned  father,  dearie,"  she  explains  to  the 
startled  Cricket,  and,  protesting  that  they  need  n't 
ask  her  to  read  Dickens  while  sitting  on  a  volcano, 
must  needs  be  revived  by  a  slug  of  whisky  before 
she  dare  venture  before  her  public  with  the  death 
of  Little  Nell.  Meanwhile  the  calls  out  front  are 
all  for  a  joint  appearance  of  Kaintuck  and  the 
Cricket.  Kaintuck  is  pushed  on  to  the  stage, 
promising  to  give  the  Cricket  a  recognizable  cue 
for  her  entrance.  From  your  vantage  point  be- 
hind the  back-drop  you  can  hear  the  old  man  pre- 
paring for  her. 

"Ye  call  me  chief  I"  he  thunders. 

"My  God,"  wails  the  tragedy  queen,  "he 's 
going  to  give  them  'Spartacus.'  " 

But  he  shifts  in  time  to  "There's  a  lady  down- 
stairs," and  on  the  roar  of  appreciation  which  that 
evokes  out  front  the  curtain  falls. 

In  this  comedy,  so  neatly  and  simply  put  to- 


228        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

gether,  Augustus  Thomas,  with  a  skill  and  an 
affection  not  many  of  his  brother  playwrights 
could  have  brought  to  the  task,  catches  for  a  few 
hours  in  the  theater  of  to-day  some  of  the  stuff 
that  used  to  be  part  of  our  national  life,  catches 
and  holds  for  the  younger  generation  some  fast- 
fading  memories  of  the  America  that  was. 

The  play  is  so  obviously  authentic  that  it  is 
worth  while  considering  its  origins  and  sources,  a 
process  rarely  profitable  in  these  days  when,  al- 
though the  mimeograph  press-sheet  may  say  that 
the  idea  for  "The  Lizard  Girl"  came  to  Marma- 
duke  Snooks  as  he  was  lounging  at  his  shooting- 
lodge  in  the  Adirondacks,  you  have  reason  to  sus- 
pect that  it  really  came  to  him  when  a  manager 
telephoned  to  ask  him  how  many  hours  it  would 
take  him  to  come  downtown  and  naturalize  a  Ger- 
man comedy  that  had  just  arrived. 

"Palmy  Days"  was  born  of  a  sketch  produced 
at  the  Lambs'  Gambol,  which  Arthur  Hopkins 
directed.  That  sketch,  based  in  turn  on  a  short 
story  dramatized  by  Edward  Flammer,  revealed 
Wilton  Lackaye  in  a  guise  unfamiliar  even  to 
those  who  had  known  him  long  and  seen  him  in 
many  parts,  from  the  speculator  in  "The  Pit"  to 
the  venom-visaged  Svengali  in  "Trilby."    In  this 


"PALMY  DAYS"  229 

sketch  he  was  merely  a  flowing-bearded  lounger 
in  a  Western  bar,  a  bibulous  but  chivalrous  old 
duffer  who  radiated  a  certain  wonderful  kindli- 
ness. Before  the  evening  was  gone  and  while 
Lackaye  was  still  plucking  tufts  of  his  heroic 
beard  from  his  startled  face,  Mr.  Thomas  had 
dropped  up  to  his  dressing-room  to  say,  "Well 
done,"  and  suggest  ever  so  tentatively  a  play 
around  this  new  characterization.  "Palmy  Days" 
grew  from  that,  and  within  a  year  Mr.  Lackaye 
was  to  come  to  town  with  the  fiiie  and  striking 
portrait  of  Kaintuck. 

Nothing  of  the  original  sketch  was  left  save  the 
astonishing  Lackaye  make-up  and  a  single  line  of 
the  text,  a  line  inserted,  incidentally,  by  Lackaye 
himself.  It  comes  at  the  climax  of  the  second  act, 
when  the  baying  dog  tracks  old  Kaintuck  to  the 
saloon  and  the  reckless  Farrell  has  the  drop  on 
him.  It  is  Big  Lil  who  knocks  up  FarrelVs  gun 
and  drags  him  away. 

"In  that  case,"  says  Farrell  sententiously  and 
with  great  scorn,  "I  bid  you  good  evening." 

To  which  bid  Kaintuck  replies  with  an  ele- 
gantly imp>erturbable  drawl : 

"I  sees  your  'Good  evening'  and  I  raises  you 
*Au  revoir.'  " 


230        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

So  much  for  the  origin  of  "Palmy  Days."  Its 
sources  are  manifold  and  fairly  familiar.  The 
Bret  Harte  background  is  unmistakable.  You 
would  know  that  the  Bret  Harte  stories  had  been 
reread  for  "Palmy  Days,"  but  if  you  had  watched 
the  whole  succession  of  Thomas  plays  you  would 
also  know  that  he  really  needed  no  fresh  course  in 
the  author  of  "Tennessee's  Pardner"  and  "The 
Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat."  The  flavor  of  these 
stories  has  been  in  some  of  his  earlier  plays,  and 
it  was  a  passage  from  Bret  Harte  that  echoed 
liked  a  dear  refrain  through  the  memorable  scene 
in  "The  Witching  Hour"  when  the  Judge — 
was  n't  it  Russ  Whytal  who  played  the  part? — 
read  over  softly  the  quatrain: 

The  delicate  odor  of  mignonette, 

The  ghost  of  a  dead  and  gone  bouquet, 

Is  all  that  tells  of  her  story ;  yet 
Could  she  think  of  a  sweeter  way? 

Then  there  's  the  quoting  actor.  The  old  fellow 
of  the  theater,  whose  every-day  speech  is  a  patter 
of  apt  bits  from  old  plays,  is  a  familiar  figure,  a 
type  that  is  passing.  The  young  actor,  whose 
career  has  consisted  of  eighteen  motion-pictures 
and  a  perfectly  corking  performance  for  four  years 
in  and  out  of  New  York  in  "The  Broken  Chain" 


m 


"PALMY  DAYS"  231 

can  hardly  be  said  to  have  a  repertoire,  indeed  has 
never  spoken  a  line  worth  remembering. 

You  may  be  sure  that  one  of  those  strange  sets 
of  warped  and  coffee-stained  books  on  "The  Lives 
of  Great  Actors,"  such  as  you  used  to  be  able  to 
pick  up  in  the  second-hand  book-stores,  would 
have  furnished  enough  material  to  support  the 
tradition  of  a  heart-breaking  Forrest  which  looms 
in  the  background  of  "Palmy  Days."  As  for  the 
incident  of  the  "There  's  a  lady  downstairs"  ca- 
tastrophe, well,  it  actually  happened  with  devas- 
tating effect  in  this  very  town  some  twenty  years 
ago.  The  Richard  stamping  about  his  tent  on  that 
occasion  was  none  other  than  the  late  Nat  Good- 
win. 

And,  of  course,  there  is  the  inescapable  sugges- 
tion of  Lotta  in  the  Cricket.  Lotta's  real  name 
was  Charlotte  Crabtree  and  she  was  born  in  Grand 
Street  seventy-two  years  ago,  the  daughter  of  an 
Englishman  who  kept  a  book-shop  in  Nassau 
Street,  which  was  very  likely  in  the  thinly  popu- 
lated outskirts  of  the  city  in  those  days.  Her  pro- 
fessional beginnings  were  made  as  a  child  dancer 
out  among  the  California  miners  at  Laporte  and 
Rabbit  Valley,  whither,  presumably,  her  folks 
had  gone  in  quest  of  the  new-found  gold  that  was 


232        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

drawing  every  adventurous  spirit  to  the  Far  West. 
The  memory  of  a  saucy  minx  dancing  in  some 
forgotten  San  Francisco  museum  while  a  fiddler 
played  for  dear  life  and  the  uplifted  miners 
showered  their  gold  at  her  feet,  that  is  the  memory 
of  Lotta  which  survives  in  many  a  tale  and  which 
must  have  suggested  the  Cricket  for  "Palmy 
Days." 

The  dream  of  the  Cricket's  mother  came  true 
for  Lotta,  for  the  East,  New  York,  even  London, 
bore  witness  to  her  eventual  triumph.  Even  Lon- 
don saw  and  liked  her  playing  of  the  Marchioness 
in  a  wild  stage  version  of  "The  Old  Curiosity 
Shop."  Augustus  Thomas  used  to  see  Lotta  when 
her  annual  engagement  in  St.  Louis  was  a  great 
event.  She  was  the  forerunner  of  many  a  prom- 
ising soubrette,  and  when  young  Minnie  Mad- 
dern,  in  very  short  skirts  and  an  impish  manner 
that  went  well  with  her  red  hair,  toured  the  Far 
West  of  the  eighties  in  preposterous  melodramas, 
she  was  following  a  trail  which  Lotta  had  blazed 
for  her. 

They  are  fast  friends  now,  Lotta  and  Mrs. 
Fiske,  for,  though  the  actress  who  once  set  many 
a  heart  a-thumping  under  the  red  shirts  in  the  old 
California  mining-camps  has  not  been  heard  from 


"PALMY  DAYS"  233 

since  her  withdrawal  from  the  stage  about  thirty 
years  ago,  she  is  living  in  sedate  retirement  in 
Boston. 

There  happened  on  the  first  night  of  "Palmy 
Days"  one  of  those  eleventh-hour  assumptions  of 
a  difficult  role — going  on  without  rehearsal,  as- 
tonished and  delighted  managers,  five-year  con- 
tracts, and  all  that  sort  of  thing — which  occa- 
sionally enliven  the  theater.  Came  the  first  night 
of  the  new  Thomas  comedy  and  there  was  no  one 
to  play  the  bloodhound  who  must  come  racing 
along  the  trail  with  lolloping  tongue  and  simple 
earnestness,  charge  through  the  crowded  bar,  and 
pick  Kcdntuck  out  of  the  mob  there. 

The  producer  of  "Palmy  Days"  was  confronted 
with  a  problem.  Just  as  it  is  difficult  to  find  ac- 
tors nowadays  with  any  Shaksperian  repertoire, 
so  you  can  no  longer  send  around  the  corner  and 
get  some  talented  stage-struck  bloodhounds  as  you 
could  in  the  days  when  there  were  'Elizas  to  be 
pursued  in  countless  productions.  The  blood- 
hound first  engaged  for  "Palmy  Days"  became  in- 
disposed as  rehearsals  progressed.  A  mammoth 
mastiff,  costly,  purse-proud,  and  nonchalant, 
was  hurriedly  forwarded  to  Atlantic  City  for  the 
premiere  there.     He  sauntered  on  the  stage  with 


234        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

such  obvious  indifference  on  the  subject  of  Kain- 
tuck's  whereabouts,  guilt,  and  aroma  that  Wilton 
Lackaye  was  appalled.  "We  'd  better  call  him 
Atlantic  City,"  said  that  outrageous  punster, 
* 'because  of  his  bored  walk."  Laughter  by  the  les- 
ser members  of  the  company.  Feeble  laughter  by 
the  worried  management. 

Then,  when  the  opening  night  came  in  New 
York,  it  was  the  playwright's  own  dog  who  saved 
the  day,  the  stunning  Belgian  police-dog  brought 
to  him  from  the  Army  of  Occupation  by  his  son. 
This  dog  was  a  shaggy,  affable,  easily  excited  fel- 
low named  Luxembourg,  after  the  duchy  in  which 
he  joined  Major  Luke  Thomas's  outfit.  Lux 
knew  only  one  trick,  but  he  knew  that  very  well. 
When  questioned  as  to  the  whereabouts  of  Mr. 
Thomas's  hat,  he  would  lift  his  beautiful  head 
toward  the  heavens  and  howl  till  he  found  it. 
Then  he  shut  up. 

It  was  very  easy.  They  hid  him  in  a  high  dress- 
ing-room at  the  Playhouse.  They  gave  Kaintuck 
Mr.  Thomas's  hat  to  hold.  At  the  cue  toward  the 
end  of  the  second  act,  Luke  Thomas,  crouching 
over  the  dog,  whispered,  "Where  's  that  hat?" 
Faintly  to  the  audience  in  the  theater  below  came 
the  sound  of  a  dog  hot  on  the  scent.    Nearer  and 


"PALMY  DAYS"  235 

nearer  came  the  treble  of  his  baying.  Then  it 
sounded  just  outside  Ma  Curie y's  bar.  Then  into 
the  crowded  room  he  plunged,  shoving  this  way 
and  that,  straight  across  to  where  Kaintuck 
lounged  against  the  bar.    The  scene  was  saved. 


XVI 
MR.  TINNEY 

THIS  is  the  story  of  Philadelphia's  fastest 
embalmer  and  how  he  became  a  Broadway 
star.  To  be  sure  he  was  also  a  fire-engine  driver 
of  no  mean  attainments  and  for  several  summers 
he  swanked  about  as  chief  life-guard  on  the  At- 
lantic City  beach  next  the  steel  pier.  Then  the 
war  made  a  captain  of  him.  But  these  were  mere 
avocations.  Twenty  years  ago  he  really  was  set- 
tled for  life  as  an  undertaker's  assistant  in  a  city 
that  is  extremely  partial  to  funerals,  when  an 
inner  urge,  driven  on  by  circumstances  over  which 
he  had  precious  little  control,  turned  him  into  a 
popular  comedian.  That  is  the  tale  to  be  told,  and 
its  hero  is  known  to  the  parish  register  as  Frank 
Aloysius  Robert  Tinney. 

Most  chronic  playgoers  know  Tinney,  his  tricks 
and  his  manners.  For  even  if  they  have  not  seen 
him  in  the  flesh,  they  have  at  least  run  into  one 
or  another  of  the  several  mimics  who  sustain  life 

in   the   English  music-halls   and   the  American 

236 


MR.  TINNEY  237 

vaudeville  temples  by  giving  imitations  of  him. 
They  know  how  he  comes  shuffling  out  and  an- 
nounces trustingly  that  he  is  about  to  tell  the  story 
of  the  goat  that  had  its  nose  cut  off.  With  much 
pother  and  whispering,  with  grave  and  naive  con- 
viction that  the  point  of  the  jest  is  a  momentous 
matter  to  be  approached  thoughtfully  and,  if  any 
error  creeps  in,  to  be  reapproached,  he  goes  into 
audible  consultation  with  the  orchestra-leader. 
He  spends  several  minutes  instructing  that  con- 
temptuous accomplice  how  to  feed  him  with  the 
right  cue  by  asking:  "But  how  does  he  smell*?" 
Only  the  wretched  fellow  mixes  things  up  by 
asking:  "Dear,  dear,  how  does  the  unhappy 
quadruped  breathe?"  So  poor  Tinney,  who  had 
hoped  to  shout  "Rotten !"  at  the  top  of  his  lungs, 
is  covered  with  confusion  and  beats  a  retreat  by 
playing  "Poet  and  Peasant"  on  the  bagpipes. 

When  you  thus  find  a  fellow-citizen  deriving 
an  income  comparable  to  that  of  the  President 
of  the  United  States  by  the  simple  process  of  tell- 
ing bad  jokes  as  badly  as  possible,  you  can't  help 
speculating  on  the  process  by  which  he  built  up 
so  strange  a  commodity.  Of  Tinney,  certainly, 
you  always  wonder  vaguely  where  he  got  his  style, 
where  he  got  his  jokes,  and  where  he  got  his  shoes 


238        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

— those  monstrous  and  unbelievable  shoon  which 
leave  so  little  room  on  the  stage  for  any  one  else. 

As  to  his  style,  it  was  an  accident.  Tinney 
was  living  with  his  folks  in  Philadelphia  when,  at 
the  age  of  five,  he  somehow  convinced  his  father 
that  a  stage  career  awaited  him.  In  a  church  en- 
tertainment in  their  parish,  he  had,  it  is  true,  pro- 
voked the  laughter  of  the  audience.  But  this  had 
been  quite  imintentional.  Still,  the  memory  of 
that  laughter  and  applause  hung  around  the  Tin- 
ney menage^  and  before  long  the  youngster  was 
assailed  with  burnt  cork,  thrust  into  starched 
white  dresses,  and  sent  forth  to  sing  three  times 
a  day  at  Keith's  old  Bijou  Theater  in  Eighth 
Street — a  famous  vaudeville  house  known  to  the 
natives  as  the  Buy  Joe. 

Forty  dollars  a  week  was  to  be  the  salary;  and 
by  Saturday  the  management  had  magnificently 
decided  that  the  new-comer,  billed  as  Baby  Frank 
Tinney,  should  be  featured  and  furthermore  that 
he  had  earned  the  right  to  appear  only  twice  a  day 
during  his  second  week.  Unfortunately  Tinney, 
pere^  misinterpreted  this  tribute  as  an  aspersion. 
"My  kid  's  good  enough,  he  is,  to  appear  five  times 
a  day,"  quoth  Tinney,  pere^  a  trifle  truculent. 
And  so,  after  one  delirious  week,  the  young  artist 


_J 


MR.  TINNEY  239 

was  snatched  from  the  arms  of  Thespis  and  packed 
off  to  school. 

However,  he  had  smelled  powder  and  grease- 
paint, and,  just  as  Laurette  Taylor  in  her  child- 
hood used  to  go  the  rounds  of  the  church  enter- 
tainments in  Harlem,  so  Tinney  and  his  brother 
did  songs  and  dances  and  jokes  at  the  parochial 
shindigs  of  their  home  town.  This  kept  him  in 
funds  right  up  to  the  time  when  his  father,  in  a 
burst  of  ambition,  dragged  him  down  off  the  fire- 
engine  and  sent  him  struggling  to  Jefferson  Medi- 
cal. There  one  day  our  hero  heard  that  while  it 
took  four  years  and  more  to  learn  to  be  a  doctor, 
it  took  only  six  months  to  learn  to  be  an  under- 
taker. To  a  simple  and  eager  soul,  there  seemed 
to  be  no  choice  in  the  matter  at  all,  and  before 
long  the  thwarted  minstrel  was  quite  the  life 
of  many  a  wake  on  the  banks  of  the  Schuyl- 
kill. 

He  might  have  gone  on  this  way  indefinitely 
had  not  the  manager  of  a  minstrel  show  encoun- 
tered him  when,  like  the  true  Philadelphian  he  is, 
he  was  balmily  taking  the  Saturday  afternoon  air 
on  Chestnut  Street.  Was  it  true,  the  manager 
asked,  that  as  a  comedian,  he  was  by  way  of  being 
a  scream  *?     "I  'm  good,  I  am,"  Tirmey  replied. 


240        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

And  in  what  vein,  the  manager  asked,  did  the 
comedy  flow*? 

"Well,"  the  unembarrassed  embalmer  replied, 
"me  and  my  brother,  we  got  two  jokes  this  season, 
we  have.  I  say  to  him:  'Hey,  there,  I  know 
what 'd  stick  you.'  And  he  says,  'Do  you?'  and 
I  say  'Yes,'  and  he  says,  'What*?'  and  I  say  'A 
pin.'  Then  I  say  to  him,  I  say,  'Say,  I  certainly 
am  sorry  I  bought  that  wooden  whistle.'  And  he 
says  'Are  you?'  and  I  say  'Yes,'  and  he  says, 
'Well,  Frank,  why  are  you  sorry  you  bought  the 
wooden  whistle*?'  and  I  say  'Because  it  wouldn't 
whistle.'  That 's  our  line  this  year,"  Tinney  went 
on.  "Of  course  they  might  not  get  it  out  on  the 
road  but  it  goes  great  here  in  the  city." 

"Well,"  said  the  manager  reflectively,  "I  guess 
in  my  show  we  '11  just  have  you  sing." 

Yet  after  the  minstrel  show  had  struck  out 
along  the  great  highway,  it  so  happened  that  one 
of  the  real  comedians  had  the  measles  or  fell 
through  a  manhole  or  something,  and  fate  pro- 
pelled Tinney  into  the  center  of  the  stage.  He 
was  in  a  panic.  "What's  the  matter  of  you?" 
asked  the  manager  bitterly.  "You  claim  you  're 
a  comedian  and  now  's  your  chance." 

But  Tinney  explained  that,  whereas  he  was 


MR.  TINNEY  241 

excruciatingly  funny,  he  needed  some  one  with 
him.  He  could  n't  work  alone.  "Well,"  said  the 
manager  carelessly,  "hx  it  up  with  the  orches- 
tra-leader. I  guess  he  can  ask  you  the  ques- 
tions." 

So  Tinney  labored  to  train  the  orchestra-leader 
as  a  foil  and  all  went  smoothly  till  the  point  of  the 
wooden  whistle  wheeze,  when  Tinney  was  foiled 
indeed.  For  the  orchestra-leader  forgot  his  part 
and  instead  of  asking  helpfully :  "Well,  Frank, 
why  are  you  sorry  you  bought  the  wooden 
whistle'?"  he  merely  said,  "Oh,  is  that  so*?"  or 
something  equally  discouraging. 

For  a  moment  the  stars  reeled  in  their  courses 
while  Tinney,  staring  anxiously  across  the  foot- 
lights, protested:  "Say  you're  crabbing  my  act, 
you  are.  You  had  n't  ought  to  of  said  that.    You 

had  ought  to  of  said "  and  thus  went  on  to 

straighten  the  fellow  out.  Onlookers  from  the 
wings  were  horrified.  "It 's  twenty-three  for  him," 
said  the  end-man,  in  the  snappy  slang  of  the  day. 
"Just  listen  to  him."  "Not  at  all,"  said  the  man- 
ager, who  must  have  been  a  genius  in  his  way, 
"just  listen  to  the  audience." 

And,  indeed,  the  audience  was  in  such  fits  of 
laughter  that  the  outraged  orchestra-leader  was 


242         SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

laboriously  instructed  that  night  never  under  any 
circumstances  to  give  Tinney  the  right  cue.  From 
that  day  to  this,  Tinney  has  subsisted  almost 
entirely  on  bad  jokes  gone  wrong. 

So  it  has  happened  that  he  never  has  needed  a 
partner  in  the  sense  that  Stone  had  Montgomery 
or  that  Fields  had  Weber.  He  has  merely  worked 
with  whoever  was  handy.  His  foils  have  been 
every  orchestra-leader  from  Los  Angeles  to  Leices- 
ter Square,  and  he  has  also  pressed  into  service 
such  varied  artists  as  Vernon  Castle,  Ethel  Levey, 
and  the  old  horse  who  toured  with  him  in  "Tickle 
Me." 

The  memoirs  of  this  veteran  actor — of  the 
horse,  that  is — would  make  amusing  literature. 
He  doubtless  made  his  debut  in  "Mazeppa,"  and 
it  is  certain  that  for  many  seasons  he  raced  with 
great  virtuosity  and  artistic  sincerity  in  "The 
Country  Fair"  and  "Ben-Hur."  Marilynn  Mil- 
ler danced  on  his  broad  and  comfortable  back  in 
the  circus  scene  of  the  1919  "Follies,"  and  then, 
just  as  he  thought  he  was  due  for  an  honorable 
retirement  from  the  stage,  Tinney  bought  him. 
He  was  much  the  worse  for  wear,  and  his  years 
were  twenty-eight,  but  Tinney  paid  a  thousand 
dollars  for  him  because  he  was  an  artist.    He  was 


MR.  TINNEY  243 

not  only  very,  very  old,  but,  besides  having  a 
cracked  hoof,  was  incorrigibly  lazy,  so  that  he 
had  to  be  taken  to  and  from  the  theater  in  a 
truck.  He  was  just  like  a  chorus-girl,  Tinney 
complained,  what  with  his  elegant  stable  and  his 
powder  and  paint  and  all.  This  ancient  beast's 
main  duty  in  life  was  to  throw  a  fit  eight  times  a 
week  at  the  very  suggestion  of  Tinney's  mounting 
him.  He  was  an  amusing  old  comedian,  but  they 
do  say  the  funniest  part  of  "Tickle  Me"  was  the 
scene  the  audience  never  saw.  It  was  the  affec- 
tionate exchange  of  badinage  and  insults  between 
Tinney  and  his  milk-white  steed  as  they  fore- 
gathered in  the  wings  before  going  on. 

Tinney,  then,  can  pick  up  his  partners  wherever 
he  happens  to  be,  and  no  rehearsals  are  really 
necessary.  I  was  deeply  impressed  with  this  fact 
one  summer  evening  back  in  1914  when  a  number 
of  us  were  paying  our  respects  to  Ethel  Levey  in 
her  dressing-room  at  the  London  Hippodrome. 
A  frantic  message  came  from  the  manager  to  the 
effect  that  Shirley  Kellogg  had  unexpectedly 
"biffed  off  to  the  Continong"  and  that  Tinney 
wanted  Miss  Levey  to  go  on  in  her  place  with  him 
in  the  restaurant  scene.  She  sent  back  regretful 
word  that  she  had  never  even  seen  it  and  could  n't 


244        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

very  well  go  on  without  a  single  rehearsal.  Which 
rejoinder  brought  Tinney  in  person. 

''Why,  Ethel,"  he  said,  in  loud  reproach,  "you 
know  you  don't  have  to  rehearse  at  all,  you  don  't. 
I  '11  tell  you  everything  to  say  and  you  just  say 
it."  Which  sounded  so  easy  that  she  gave  a  pat 
to  her  hair,  a  switch  to  her  skirts  and  started  for 
the  stage.  We  raced  around  in  front  to  find  them 
already  on.  Tinney  was  saying:  "Now,  Ethel, 
let 's  do  the  joke  about  the  peas.  Come  ahead, 
Miss  Levey,  stop  laughing  and  we  '11  do  the  joke 
about  the  peas.  You  say  you  think  my  table 
maimers  are  perfectly  elegant  and  you  ask  me 
how  I  manage  to  keep  my  peas  from  rolling  off 
my  knife." 

"Well,  Frank,"  Miss  Levey  repeated  dutifully, 
"how  do  you  keep  your  peas  from  rolling  off  your 
knife?" 

"Why,  Ethel,  that 's  easy,  that  is — I  mix  'em 
up  with  my  mashed  potato." 

And  so  it  went  for  fifteen  minutes.  The  last  we 
saw  of  them,  they  were  bowing  hand  in  hand,  with 
Tinney  much  affected  and  thanking  every  one  for 
being  so  kind  to  him  and  Ethel  and  the  children. 

That 's  Tinney's  style  and  that 's  where  he 
found  it.    His  shoes'?    Well,  he  inherited  them 


MR.  TINNEY  245 

from  a  vaudeville  monologist  who  had  bought 
them  thirty  years  before  from  an  old  darky  in 
Alabama.  They  cost  fifty  cents.  Tinney  got 
them  for  nothing. 

His  jokes'?  He  picks  those  up  around  town. 
When  he  feels  a  new  show  impending  he  sends  for 
one  of  those  Times  Square  scribblers  who  make 
their  living  by  writing  monologues  and  orders  a 
new  one  from  him.  This  he  reads  over  and  pro- 
nounces terrible.  He  then  reads  it  to  Willie 
Collier  who  makes  suggestions  while  Tinney 
makes  notes.  It  is  next  tried  on  Cohan.  More 
suggestions  and  more  notes.  He  then  goes  in 
despair  to  Tommy  Gray,  who  puts  in  what  Tinney 
calls  the  "nifties."  As  when  he  now  glowers  at 
the  orchestra-leader  and  says:  "You're  like  a 
man  who  wears  a  toupee — you  're  only  kidding 
yourself,"  or  again:  "I  ain't  going  to  have  more 
than  three  children,  I  ain't,  because,  look  here,  I 
read  in  an  almanac  that  every  fourth  person  bom 
into  the  world  is  a  Chinaman." 

Yet  with  all  this  prayerful  preparation,  most  of 
Tinney's  fun  just  crops  up  fresh  and  unstudied 
as  a  result  of  the  first  impact  between  him  and  his 
audience.  The  biggest  laugh  that  ever  rewarded 
him  shook  the  New  Amsterdam  Theater  the  open- 


246        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

ing  night  of  "Watch  Your  Step."  That  was  a 
revue  that  had  not  one  star  but  a  constellation. 
The  Castles,  Brice  and  King,  Sallie  Fisher,  Harry 
Kelly  and  his  dog — these  had  all  done  their  best 
tricks,  but  10:30  had  come  and  gone  and  there 
was  no  sign  of  Tinney.  We  had  come  to  the  con- 
clusion that  he  was  laid  low  on  some  bed  of  pain 
when,  in  the  Palm  Beach  hotel  scene,  Vernon 
Castle  called  out:  "Where  's  the  hat-boy*?"  On 
rushed  Tinney,  breathless.  As  the  welcome  sub- 
sided, he  could  be  heard  explaining  plaintively: 
*'I  've  been  sitting  out  there  all  blacked  up  since 
half-past  seven  waiting  for  that  dirty  bum  to  say : 
'Where 's  the  hat-boy?'  "  Whereupon,  as  the 
English  newspapers  say,  laughter  and  applause. 


XVII 
THE   "CHAUVE-SOURIS" 

OUT  of  Russia  by  devious  ways  there  came  to 
us  early  in  1922  a  jaunty  and  delightful 
entertainment,  which,  to  avoid  confusion,  was 
called  here  by  the  name  it  used  in  Paris — the 
Chauve-Souris.  It  is  a  vagrant  troupe  of  Russian 
singers  and  dancers  and  clowns  who  used  to  con- 
tribute to  a  midnight  frolic  they  enjoyed  giving 
behind  closed  doors  after  theater  time  at  the  little 
Bat  Restaurant  in  Moscow.  As  long  ago  as  1908 
the  custom  was  inaugurated  of  opening  those 
doors  to  the  public  on  five  nights  of  the  week. 
And  once  every  year,  by  way  of  wild  dissipation, 
the  master  of  their  revels,  this  moon-faced  Nikita 
Balieff  from  Armenia,  would  take  them  all  up 
Petrdgrad  way  to  play  for  the  gentry  of  the 
Romanoff  court.  On  those  eventful  excursions  it 
seems  unlikely  that  Balieff's  dreams  ever  foresaw 
how  within  ten  years  (due  to  such  remote  causes 
as  the  intrigues  of  far-off  chancelleries,  a  certain 
Prussian  fellow's  delusions  of  grandeur,  and  an 

247 


248        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

uncertain  invisible  force  known  as  Pan-Slavism) 
he  and  his  fellow-players  would  be  singing  their 
old  songs  and  cracking  their  old  jokes  in  a  shiny 
new  theater  in  Forty-ninth  Street,  New  York. 

Two  stranded  cockles  from  the  sea  of  the  revo- 
lution, left  in  Paris  by  its  receding  tide — behold 
them  now,  Balieff  and  his  gigantesque  partner 
Wavitch.  By  various  ruses  they  succeeded  at  last 
in  gathering  about  them  enough  of  their  old  com- 
rades to  go  back  into  the  show  business  with  their 
familiar  repertoire.  Here,  perhaps,  were  two  sin- 
ewy dancers  who  had  come  over  to  France  during 
the  war  in  that  forlorn  Russian  contingent  which 
floated  hapless  along  the  Western  front.  Or 
maybe  three  of  the  women  who  had  escaped  to 
Warsaw  heard  that  good  old  Balieff  was  in  Paris 
and  trekked  precariously  across  Germany  to  rejoin 
him.  Or  perhaps  Wavitch,  in  his  flight  through 
Odessa  and  the  Mediterranean  cities,  remembered 
an  address  in  Constantinople  that  would  serve  to 
unearth  two  engaging  comedians  foregathered  for 
the  moment  with  the  Turks.  At  all  events,  de- 
spite the  great  dispersion,  Balieff  managed  to 
piece  a  troupe  together,  and  in  December  of  1921 
he  took  over  the  Theatre  Femina  in  the  Avenue  of 
the  Elysian  Fields.     Because   the  French   (the 


THE  "CHAUVE-SOURIS"  249 

same  silly  people  who  call  a  hat  a  chapeau)  have 
a  perverse  way  of  referring  to  a  bat  as  a  bald 
mouse,  he  was  obliged  to  name  his  little  Bat 
Theater  the  Chauve-Souris.  Paris  adored  the 
Ckauve-Souris,  flocking  to  it  from  early  December 
till  August. 

It  has  since  been  described  here  as  the  sensation 
of  Paris  and  London.  It  was  hardly  a  sensation 
in  London.  Eventually  six  of  its  numbers  en- 
joyed satisfactory  acclaim  in  the  music-halls,  but 
Cochran's  first  effort  to  make  the  Chauve-Souris 
an  English  fad  by  charging  a  pound  a  seat  for  it 
at  a  special  theater  was  rebuffed  by  the  London 
playgoer.  This  is  not  surprising.  The  London 
playgoer  is  the  fellow  who  could  not  be  dragged 
to  see  "Heartbreak  House"  or  "The  Jest"  or 
"John  Ferguson"  or  "He  Who  Gets  Slapped"  or 
"Liliom."  On  the  other  hand,  he  went  for  a  solid 
year  to  "The  Voice  From  the  Minaret."  He  went 
for  two  or  three  years  to  that  darling  of  his  heart, 
"Paddy,  the  Next  Best  Thing."  A  rum  cove,  the 
London  playgoer.  The  rumor  that  he  sniffed  at 
the  Chauve-Souris  quite  whetted  the  American 
appetite  to  see  it. 

The  Chauve-Souris  is  a  little  baffling.  It  is  dif- 
ficult to  describe  it  because  the  satisfactions  it 


250        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

gives  are  so  varied  and  sometimes  so  impalpable. 
It  is  Russian  vaudeville,  but  to  say  so  is  to  apply 
a  discolored  word  to  it.  The  second  wit  of  his 
time  suggests  as  an  appropriate  variant  that  we 
call  it  vodkaville.  It  is  hard  to  sum  up  in  a  word 
because  two  or  three  of  its  thirteen  numbers  are 
ordinary  enough,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  two  or 
three  are  at  once  precious  and  universal — as 
"Alice  in  Wonderland"  is.  Consider,  for  instance, 
that  blessed  march  of  the  wooden  soldiers,  who 
drill  with  immense  gravity  to  the  measures  of  a 
dear  old  tune.  Your  great  joy  in  them  is  blended 
of  nursery  memories  and  an  adult  admiration  for 
the  rare  precision  of  their  craftsmanship.  Ring 
Lardner,  Mrs.  Fiske,  and  the  little  boy  from  next 
door  could  sit  in  a  row  before  them  and  experience 
a  common  rapture.  Their  drill  is  an  exquisite 
thing  in  that  it  is  exquisitely  done,  just  as  "Le 
Spectre  de  la  Rose"  was  an  exquisite  thing  only 
when  Nijinski  and  Lopokova  danced  it  together. 
It  is  a  perfect  thing  in  the  sense  that  "The  Man 
Who  Married  a  Dumb  Wife"  was  perfect,  as 
"The  Roman  Road"  by  Kenneth  Grahame  is  per- 
fect, as  the  Noctambule  song  in  "Louise"  is  per- 
fect when  Diaz  sings  it. 

Because  it  began  informally,  and  because  the 


THE  "CHAUVE-SOURIS"  251 

wily  BaliefF  knows  full  well  that  its  continued 
informality  is  the  very  breath  of  its  nostrils,  he 
works  artfully  to  keep  going,  however  far  from 
Moscow,  the  same  neighborly,  haphazard,  drop- 
in-for-a-moment  atmosphere  of  the  little  restau- 
rant back  home.  The  Raymond  Hitchcock  of  the 
Chauve-Souris,  he  stands  in  front  of  it  and  chats 
about  it  whimsically  with  the  delighted  audience 
— chats  about  it  in  a  comic  pitter-patter  of  re- 
cently acquired  English  which  is  so  amateurish 
that  it  adds  measurably  to  the  gaiety  of  the  pro- 
ceedings. When  the  Chauve-Souris  is  in  New 
York,  it  is  great  fun  to  go  of  a  Tuesday  afternoon, 
when  the  house  is  full  of  show-folks  escaped  from 
their  own  plays  and  hurrying  at  once  to  this  odd 
adventure.  Balieff  (coached,  one  suspects,  by  his 
confederate,  Morris  Gest)  discovers  Doris  Keane 
out  front  and  makes  obeisances  to  his  new  czarina. 
He  rejoices  audibly  that  Clare  Sheridan  has  come 
for  the  second  time  and  paid  him  the  compliment 
of  bringing  her  children  with  her.  The  audience 
begins  to  limber  up  and  grow  neighborly.  Appeals 
for  encores  and  explanations  are  showered  down 
from  the  balcony  in  a  dozen  languages.  Balieff 's 
thin  trickle  of  English  dries  up.  He  retreats  to 
French  and  attempts  a  pow-wow  with  Lenore 


252         SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

Ulric  in  that  language,  but  she  protests  that  she 
does  not  know  enough  of  it.  The  balcony  insists 
on  having  that  Tartar  dance  over  again.  Balieff 
vows  it  can  't  be  done.  He  says  so  in  Russian 
and  appeals  plaintively  to  Al  Jolson  to  play  in- 
terpreter. Master  Jolson,  who  knows  two  words 
of  Russian  at  the  most,  is  not  daunted  by  that 
circumstance.  The  dancer,  he  confides  to  the  audi- 
ence, can  hardly  repeat  the  number  because  he  is 
already  half-way  down  the  street  where  he  has  a 
date  with  a  Russian  caviar.  Balieff,  who  iden- 
tifies the  one  word  caviar  and  can't  for  the  life  of 
him  see  where  that  fitted  in,  escapes  under  cover 
of  the  laughter  and  announces  the  final  number. 
It  is,  he  explains,  his  own  farewell  apparition  for 
the  afternoon.  Which  little  slip,  together  with 
Jolson's  earnest  effort  to  have  him  say  "opera- 
tion" instead,  increases  the  playgoer's  good  hu- 
mor and,  grinning  on  his  way  out,  it  requires  a 
distinct  effort  at  repression  on  his  part  to  keep 
from  saying  good-by  to  every  one  in  the  house. 

You  might  get  some  notion  of  the  Chauve- 
Souris  of  what  it  is  and  how  it  came  here,  if  you 
would  imagine  an  American  revolution  blowing 
all  this  present-day  structure  to  smithereens  and 
landing   Elsie   Janis,    destitute   but   spunky,    in 


THE  "CHAUVE-SOURIS"  253 

Buenos  Aires.  She  might  run  into  the  fugitive 
Fred  Stone  on  the  street.  He  would  have  heard 
that  two  old-time  dancers  from  his  company  were 
clogging  for  their  board  over  in  Valparaiso.  And 
she  might  have  news  that  Nora  Bayes  was  singing 
in  a  cabaret  up  in  Rio.  There  would  be  some  good 
singers  of  spirituals,  too,  stranded  in  the  Argen- 
tine who  might  be  summoned.  What  would  be 
easier  than  to  collect  these  scattered  bits  of  Broad- 
way and  start  work  on  a  little  program  of  old 
songs  and  old  steps?  What  more  natural  than 
that  they  should  become  a  fad  there  and  later  find 
profit  in  touring  as  far  as  Tokio  and  Shanghai? 

Or,  perhaps  it  would  be  simpler  just  to  suggest 
that  all  those  playgoers  who  especially  enjoyed 
"Peter  Pan"  and  "The  Yellow  Jacket"  and 
"Pierrot  the  Prodigal"  would  do  well  to  look  into 
this  Chauve-Souris  and  see  if  it  has  not  something 
to  say  to  them. 


XVIII 

After  a  season  in  which  nearly  every  heroine 
was  ruined  either  just  before  the  first  act  or  at  the 
climax  of  the  third  and^  in  particular^  after  seeing^ 
in  that  one  season^  two  plays  by  Zoe  Akins  in  each 
of  which  the  heroine  kept  being  ruined  and  ruined 
and  ruined^  this  hitherto  blameless  chronicler  of 
the  theater  momentarily  lost  control  of  himself^ 
went  mad,  and  wrote  the  following  play,  which 
was  produced  for  the  first  and  last  time  on  any 
stage  at  the  Forty-ninth  Street  Theater  in  New 
York  on  April  jo,  ig22» 


254 


ZOWIE;  OR,  THE  CURSE  OF  AN 
AKINS  HEART 

— a  romanza  in  one  act — 

''Nor  all  your  piety  and  wif — From  the  Persian. 

Scene — ^A  Place  in  the  heart  of  a  great  city. 
Time — Printemps,  1922. 

Cast  (as  given  at  the  world  premiere, 
April  30,  1922) 

Marmaduke  La  Salle^  a  stomach  specialist .  . 

John  Peter  Toohey 

Lady  Friend  of  La  Salle's Neysa  McMein 

Another  Lady  Friend  of  La  Salle's 

Louise  Closser  Hale 

Dindo^  a  wandering  bus-boy J.  M.  Kerrigan 

Zhoolie  V enable^  a  suppressed  desire 

Ruth    Gillmore 

Mortimer  Van  Loon,  a  decayed  gentleman.  . 

George  S.  Kaufman 

Archibald  Van  Alstyne,  a  precisionist 

Alexander    WooUcott 

Lemuel  Pip,  an  old  taxi-driver,  who  does  not 

appear Harold  W.  Ross 

Off-stage  Music  by  J.  Heifetz 

255 


256        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

[The  rising  curtain  discloses  a  row  of  three  chairs 
in  what  seems  to  be  a  Capitol  hunch.  These 
are  occupied  by  La  Salle  and  his  guests. 
La  Salle  is  groaning  from  repletion.,  and  the 
women  are  redding  up  their  teeth  after  the 
repast. ]^ 

La  Salle.  Well,  we  might  as  well  be  going. 
I  can't  eat  any  more.  I  'm  already  seventeen 
calories  beyond  the  limit.  [Confidentially  but 
audibly]  Got  a  lot  of  wind  on  the  stomach  as  it  is. 
[To  bus-boy]  Boy,  just  a  minute. 

DiNDO  [who  never  can  decide  whether  he  is  a 
darky  waiter  or  a  gargon  from  Marseilles  or  a 
faithful  old  Hindu  servant].  Whaddya  want*? 

La  Salle  [pointing  out  of  the  window] .  Who 
is  that  strangely  wistful-looking  woman  getting 
out  of  that  taxicab? 

DiNDO  [deciding^  for  the  moment.,  to  be  Swiss]. 
That,  sir,  is  Zhoolie  Venable.  There  are  those  of 
us  who  remember  when  she  was  the  toast  of  the 
Riviera. 

First  Lady  Friend  [who  is  much  interested 
but  not  very  bright].  The  Shubert-Riviera? 

DiNDO  [ignoring  her].  Poor  Marcel  Schwob 
called  her  the  lost  laughter  of  an  unfrocked 
priest. 


THE  CURSE  OF  AN  AKINS  HEART  257 

La  Salle.  Well,  I  guess  we  must  go  now. 
That's  about  all  the  antecedent  action,    is  n't  it? 

DiNDo.    Yes,  sir. 

La  Salle.     Any  atmosphere  to  arrange? 

DiNDO.    I  think  we  have  plenty,  sir. 

La  Salle  [reluctant  to  leave].  Don't  want 
any  fine  language?  What  about  a  little  reference 
to  a  strain  of  music  that  is  hauntingly  reminiscent? 
Or  to  the  salvage  of  a  wrecked  life?  Or  perhaps 
a  little  quotation  out  of  Bartlett? 

DiNDO  [who  has  him  there].    As  for  instance? 

La  Salle.  Well,  my  part  seems  to  be  just  a 
feeder.  [Laughs  heartily  and^  in  high  good  hu- 
mor, surrenders  the  center  of  the  stage].  Say, 
that  was  a  nifty  was  n't  it? 

DiNDO  [chuckling].  It  was  damned  good,  if 
I  may  say  so,  sir. 

La  Salle.    Here,  let  me  have  the  checks. 

\Exeunt  omnes,  Dindo  gathering  up  the  rem- 
nants of  the  feast  and  clearing  away.  From  with- 
out., apparently  from  the  kitchen  or  the  cashier  s 
cage,  float  the  strains  of  ''Then  You  'II  Remem- 
ber Me.''  Enter  Zhoolie.  She  is  clad  in  a 
sumptuous  evening  gown,  over  which  a  sable  cloak 
has  been  thrown  carelessly.  She  wears  a  tiara,  a 
rope  of  pearls  and  nine  bracelets.  She  carries  a 
glass  of  milk  and  no  purse,  but,  for  reasons  never 


258        SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

quite  explained^  a  riding -crop  swings  from  one 
wrist.  She  prudently  lodges  the  glass  of  milk  on 
the  center  chair-arm^  and  then  strides  up  and 
down  the  restaurant  in  great  emotion  and^  indeed^ 
does  not  sit  down  until  the  music  has  run  its 
course,^ 

Zhoolie.  Oh,  to  be  in  England,  now  that 
Johnny  Weaver  is  in  New  York  I 

[E/z/^r  DiNDO.] 

DiNDO  \gruffiy\.  The  taxi-driver  is  outside 
and  says  do  you  want  him  to  wait*? 

Zhoolie  \a  little  flurried].  How  Hfe  pursues 
one*  Tell  the  fellow  we  shall  meet  again. 
[DiNDO  is  so  impressed  by  this  that  he  bows  out 
backward  in  the  manner  of  a  Hindu  servant  and 
only  just  succeeds  in  repressing  an  impulse  to  say, 
"Yes,  sahib."] 

[  Enter  Van  Loon,  who  seats  himself  at 
Zhoolie's  left^  sighs  deeply,  and  begins  to  eat  a 
sandwich.  His  teeth  are  well  embedded  when  a 
little  cry  of  recognition  from  her  rivets  him  in 
that  pose.  As  Zhoolie  speaks,  her  manner  be- 
com^es  more  and  more  palpitant  and  her  voice 
grows  preposterously  like  Ethel  Barrymore's.  But 
before  she  can  speak  at  all  he  sees  her  absurd 
riding-crop.} 


THE  CURSE  OF  AN  AKINS  HEART  259 

Van  Loon.     Well,  how  's  crops? 
Zhoolie.     You  I 

Van  Loon  [desdrous  to  please^  but  busy  with 
his  sandwich^.     I  think  so. 

Zhoolie.     To  think  of  meeting  you  here  I 

Van  Loon.     Let  me  see,  you  were 

Zhoolie.     That  night 


Van  Loon.     That  night  at  Chamonix 

Zhoolie.  No!  no!  Yes!  yes!  At  Chamou- 
nix.  I  see  you  now.  You  stood  lithe  and  a  little 
dear  and  splendid  there  by  the  Mer  de  Glace. 
Ever  and  always  in  my  heart,  silhouetted  against 
an  amethystine  sky.  Those  dear,  lesser  skies  of 
our  triste  yesterdays.  [Coughs  apologetically  and 
amused  at  her  scatter-brained^  Venable  ways.\ 
I  'm  afraid  I  've  forgotten  your  name. 

Van  Loon.  At  Chamounix.  Then  you  were 
— you  must  have  been — she  of  whom  all  men 
dreamed.  You  were  the  next  to  the  last  of  the 
Mad  Varicks. 

Zhoolie.  I  was  the  last!  Only,  this  year, 
they  're  calling  me  the  first  of  the  Mad  Venables. 

Van  Loon  [beginning  to  expand].  And  I 
am 

Zhoolie  [gravely  sweet  in  manner  but  not 
really  interested  in  any  one  else's  biography.^ 


26o         SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

Dear  friend,  dear,  dear  old  friend,  does  it  mat- 
ter? You  and  I — two  plaintive  notes  in  the  over- 
tones of  the  great  symphony,  two  bits 

Van  Loon  [apprehenswely].     Two  bits*? 

Zhoolie.  Two  bits  of  sorry  driftwood, 
swirled  together  for  yet  another  moment  by  some 
whimsical,  some  capricious,  eddy. 

Van  Loon  [cheerfully].     Very  good,  eddy. 

Zhoolie.  What  matter  names'?  Let  them 
call  us  what  we  really  are — flotsam  and  jetsam. 

Van  Loon  [dubiously].  Sounds  too  much 
like  a  sister  act. 

Zhoolie.  We  may  come  to  vaudeville  yet. 
What  is  life  but  a  great  circuit.  Your  heart 
yearns  for  the  Palace  and 

Van  Loon.  And  Fate  books  you  on  Fox  time. 
It 'shell! 

[Enter  Van  Alstyne,  superb  in  crush-hat, 
opera  cape^  ivory-headed  sticky  white  gloves,  and 
carrying  a  glass  of  simple  milk.  He  eyes  Van 
LooN  disdainfully  and  takes  the  third  seat.  He 
is  beginning  to  drink  when  arrested  by  another  of 
Zhoolie's  little  cries  of  recognition.^ 

Zhoolie.     You! 

Van  Alstyne.     You! 

Zhoolie.     You! 


THE  CURSE  OF  AN  AKINS  HEART  261 

Van  Loon  [in  her  ear].  Was  he  one  of  us, 
too? 

Zhoolie  [whispering  back].     I  suppose  so. 

Van  Alstyne  [beginning  to  catch  the  spirit]. 
That  night 

Van  Loon  [to  Zhoolie].  Ah,  he  was  one  of 
us,  all  right. 

Zhoolie  [a  little  amused].  I  never  seem  to 
have  done  anything  in  the  daytime. 

Van  Alstyne  [not  to  be  deflected].  That 
night  on  the  Nevsky  Prospect,  with  all  great 
Russia's  snows  for  our  couch 

Zhoolie  [shivering].  Was  n't  it  Lake  Como? 
Oh,  say  it  was  the  Lago  di  Como.  [This  cue  is 
too  much  for  the  violin  in  the  kitchen.,  which 
breaks  into  "O  Sole  Mio,"  of  course.] 

Van  Alstyne  [stiffly].  It  was  the  Nevsky 
Prospect. 

Zhoolie.  Oh,  say  it  was  the  Palazzo  at 
Campo  Santo,  while  the  dear  tawny  boys  with 
their  eyes  of  jet — the  lads  from  our  own  Napoli 
— sang  beneath  our  balcony.  And  far  out  across 
a  topaz  bay  came  the  first,  frightened  chill  of 
another  autumn. 

Van  Alstyne  [impressed,  but  firm].  It  was 
the  Nevsky  Prospect. 


262         SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

Van  Loon  [a  little  annoyed  at  being  left  out 
of  all  tlfiis^ .  How  is  the  Prospect  these  days,  any- 
how? 

DiNDO  [in  passing].     Terrible. 

Van  Alstyne.  And  now  you  have  come  to 
this. 

Zhoolie  [cowering,  heart-broken].     No. 

Van  Alstyne  [relentless] .     I  find  you  here. 

Zhoolie.     No,  no. 

Van  Alstyne.  I  find  you  in  this — this — Ah ! 
how  in  our  spinelessness  we  shun  the  words  that 
sear  and  scald  I — I  find  you  in  this — this — place. 

Zhoolie  [clutching  her  riding-crop  and  lifting 
it  to  heaven].     No!  no!  no! 

Van  Loon  [in  a  spirit  of  helpfulness].  She 
says  not. 

Zhoolie  [clasping  her  cloak  around  her]. 
With  such  as  we,  there  can  be  no  tarrying.  Let 
us  be  gone. 

DiNDO.  Can  I  get  you  anything,  Madame 
Zhoolie*? 

Zhoolie.     You,  too*? 

DiNDO.     I,  too,  Madame  Zhoolie. 

Zhoolie  [losing  track  a  little].  Was  it — 
could  it  have  been — Barcelona?    That  night 

DiNDO.  It  was  in  Cairo,  eight  years  ago  come 
All  Souls'  eve. 


THE  CURSE  OF  AN  AKINS  HEART  263 
Zhoolie.     We  met  at 


Din  DO.  It  was  in  the  Selig  Effendi  Cafe, 
Madame. 

Zhoolie.     And  you 

DiNDO.     I  was  the  waiter. 

Zhoolie  [embarrassed].  I — I  don't  seem  to 
remember  a  waiter.  [Relieved  and  ceasing  to  be 
romantic  but  becoming  terribly  gracious  at  this 
suggestion  of  an  old  retainer].  And  you  have 
remembered  all  these  years.  I  am  touched,  boy. 
You  have  moved  me — moved  a  Venable. 

DiNDO.  I  have  never  forgotten.  I  could  never 
forget.  You  went  out  without  paying  your 
check.  It  was  two  pounds,  seven,  and  eight. 
They  docked  me  for  it. 

Zhoolie  [trilling  ivith  unconvincing  delight]. 
How  like  the  VenablesI  How  like  I  But  I  can- 
not have  you  suffer.  [She  looks  around  her  with 
a  pretty  helplessness^  clutches  at  her  pearls^  and 
then  decides  not  to  give  them^  sees  Van  Loon's 
dangling  ivatch-fob,  and,  while  he  is  picking  his 
teeth,  punishes  him  by  taking  the  watch  and  hand- 
ing it  splendidly  to  the  bus-boy].  Noblesse 
oblige!  [To  the  others].  Come — our  little  hour 
is  spent. 

[Zhoolie  and  her  refound  lovers  start  for  the 
doer  hand  in  hand  when  they  are  halted  by  dis- 


264         SHOUTS  AND  MURMURS 

tressed  noises  from  the  bus-boy^  who  has  come 
upon  the  lunch  checks J\ 

DiNDO.     But  who  will  pay  for  these? 

Zhoolie  and  Lovers  [^in  chorus^.  God  knows! 
\_Exeunt.^ 

DiNDO  [smkmg  into  one  of  the  vacated  chairs] . 
What  does  it  all  mean? 

Voices  [from  the  empyrean,  the  wings,  the 
cashiers  cage,  the  kitchen,  and  the  audience^. 
God  knows  I 


CURTAIN 


Date  Due 


Library  Bureau  Cat.  No.  1137 


